Video Guide Of The Birds Of Venezuela                                                                             By  MikeBERGIN                                                                                                              www.10000birds.com
 

This planet of ours is impossibly vast, as those eager to bird the length and width of it might attest. Watching birds in a new territory can be a tense affair; if you don't spot and identify that tody-flycatcher during your brief stay in a distant land, YOU MAY NEVER GET ANOTHER CHANCE! There are simply too many other places to visit, too many birds to see. Consequently, if you are serious about making every second count when birding abroad, and by abroad, I mean anywhere outside your backyard, you have to do the research. Yes, school may be out where you are, but education never ends for the ornithologically-inclined. Birders on the road should acquire, at the very least, a definitive bird-list and field guide for each stop on the itinerary. With only one shot at a rare endemic, a decent photograph or illustration might make the difference between clarity and confusion. But wouldn't you prefer, instead of those static resources, some full-color, high-resolution, true-to-life video and sound of your target birds? If you're heading to Venezuela, you've just hit the jackpot!

The Video Guide of the Birds of Venezuela, presented by Ferraro Nature Films, documents more than 300 superb species over four DVDs. This vibrant video guide offers footage for passerines and non-passerines, classified by order and identified by both their English and Spanish names. Each clip usually includes calls and field sounds as well.

I've had the opportunity to correspond a bit with Carlo Ferraro, the accomplished documentarian behind the Video Guide of the Birds of Venezuela and a slew of other works, and I am impressed. His camera work is incredible, capturing the beauty and character of his avian subjects. He also comes across as very passionate about the birds of Venezuela. Viewing the toucans and tanagers, cotingas and cocks-of-the-rock of his homeland through his eyes will most certainly inspire you to seek out each one yourself. Judged strictly as a visual record of a variety of exotic tropical species, this video guide is a treasure.

I can't help but think that the Video Guide of the Birds of Venezuela could be an even more valuable resource than it already is. The DVDs offer video footage with sounds, as well as still photos and sections with all the species edited one after the other for quick review. However, the video lacks any kind of narration. I would have loved to have heard information about each featured bird's habitat, habits, and seasonal movements. Obviously, the videographer knows these birds well; how else could he have captured such intimate shots? His observations could have added another level of utility to this guide, and more important, an additional means to engage the viewer. Even the most ardent enthusiast may find an hour of bird footage punctuated only by the odd call or song a bit tedious.

The most important attribute of a video guide is indisputably the video. For that reason, I think the Video Guide of the Birds of Venezuela is wonderful. Carlo Ferraro serves up a stunning smorgasbord of beautiful birdlife. This video guide is a must for anybody planning a bird watching trip to Venezuela. If you're headed that way, you'll value this special sneak preview of the sights and sounds of the native avifauna. More than 1,300 or so bird species are known to pass in and out of Venezuela's borders. After enjoying the Video Guide of the Birds of Venezuela, you'll be well-acquainted with at least 300 of the most beautiful of them

Video Guide of The Birds Of Venezuela                                                                           By  Mary Lou Goodwin                                                                                                    

Last Friday I  finally had the opportunity to quietly review your two Video Guides
to the Birds of Venezuela.  Carlo, they are fantastic and not just for the high
quality of the films.  As you may know, we have been working for the last few years
in the Venezuelan Audubon to interest Venezuelans in our fantastic bird life.  I am
proud to say that we have been rather successful, and your two guides are exactly
the educational tools we so badly need.  If these two guides do not open the eyes of
the ordinary citizen to the wonderful birds around them, then nothing will.  I had
two beginners visit me yesterday, and upon seeing the films they both asked where
they could purchase them.  Furthermore, the fact that the films are in both English
and Spanish is a tremendous plus.

For foreigners visiting Venezuela, after purchasing Hilty's Guide, these two films
are an absolute must.  It is one thing to read about the birds, but to actually see
them  in action makes a far greater impact.

Carlo, keep up the excellent work and we shall soon be swamped with birders.

My congratulations and best wishes,

Mary Lou Goodwin
Author, "Birding in Venezuela"

IMAGES OF BIRDS                                                                                                                                                   By David Ascanio                                                                                                                www.birding-venezuela.com

If there is something that enhance the human nature, is looking to ourselves throughout the behavior of other species, and specially of birds. Without a doubt, Carlo Ferraro has done it this time. A man with the perfectionist passion to capture every angle of our birdlife has just released a videography to let us perceive the differences in tones of plumages, breeding displays, wing beats and vocalizations in what is the most integrating non-narrated video of bird behavior I have ever seen.

Images of Birds is both exciting and relaxing. To start, our eyes will be full of the explosive images of different bird species taking off. This amazing segment continues with the phenomenal of vocalization, followed by foraging, bathing  and breeding. At the end, as if wasn’t sufficient, the video offers an amazing series of breathtaking images of hummingbirds, a group of birds so close to beauty perfection.

The video is a master piece of perception. As your eyes enjoy every segment, your own mind will make the whole story, will tell you what is going on, without narration. 50 minutes of a poem to your eyes and a challenge to your mind. Images of Birds is like a very good book, where everyone recreates the content in its own way.

For the bird lover, for the conservationist and even to understand the complexity involved in bird behavior, Images of Birds represents a step forward in understanding our birdlife. Highly recommended. A must to understand and to admire the beauties of our incredible planet.

With a lot on my plate at the moment, I reluctantly took the time off last night to watch “Images of Humminbirds”. Within two minutes I was calling Rita in to watch with me and we ended up playing the video through twice. And this morning we went for a bird-watching and mushroom-hunting walk with a friend, and to our great surprise came across an unusual tree in the Sabana in full flower and full of hummingbirds, including many Fork-tailed Woodnymphs, a couple of White-breasted Sabrewings and 4 Crimson Topazes, 3 male and a female, all three stars in your video. This last species was especially exciting for us as we have only seen one male up on the Gran Sabana previously. Having commented the video to our friend, Federico Giller, who in earlier years did research in the high Andes on the Bearded Helmetcrest and Sparkling Violetear (other actors in the video), on returning home, we watched it again right through with him! And were just as enthralled as on the first viewing.

 The video is valuable on several levels. Firstly, as a gift for non-birdwatchers, I cannot imagine anything more likely to turn them on to the wonderful world of birds. The sheer beauty and charm of these little jewels of nature as they go about their daily tasks of survival, from preening, to feeding, to squabbling with the neighbours over food resources, to bringing up the offspring, is so magnificently displayed in such clarity and intimate detail, that anyone with the least sensitivity to nature is bound to enjoy the video immensely and want to enter more deeply into the world of birds and bird-watching. I often find myself expanding at length on the joys of our hobby to the uninitiated and since a picture is worth a thousand words, I always get out the guide to the birds of Venezuela and let them leaf through the incredible variety of feathered inhabitants of this country. But there is no doubt in my mind that your video is worth a million words and will be vastly more effective in involving them more deeply than anything I can say.  

 For the initiated, us bird-watchers, the video is a wonderfully relaxing way of reliving those rare moments of excitement and joy when we have the luck to get a close view in good light of these hyper-active little fellows. All of us know the frequent frustration and stress of not managing to see them properly, of failing to catch them showing their full, amazing colours or of getting too brief a glimpse to even be able to know who we are looking at. With your video, we can relax, we can see all the actors perfectly, very close, in brilliant, feather-by-feather, detail. And, in some way, which I do not understand, we are shown the birds in their optimum, breath-taking colours. Anyone who has been hunting hummingbirds will know just how rare and difficult it can be to catch the plumage colour. The brilliant blue crown and wine-coloured throat bib of the Long-billed Starthroat, to name just one of so many examples, can be extremely difficult to catch. So often the lighting or angle of view are wrong and these brilliant colours are just dark patches. And for those like me who have tried to capture them with a camera, we can appreciate just how extraordinary the photography in this video is and the time, technique and exceptional patience it must have taken to show the actors in their full finery.

 For the bird-watchers, watching the video is also a magnificent way to sharpen one’s identification skills. I counted over twenty-five actors which are presented in a stationary position and named, and can be studied and used as a reference to identify each species as it flits across the stage. This is great practice and I have never been quicker to identify the three species we saw in real life this morning, than after studying then in the video last night. For anyone coming to or revisiting the area, watching the video will be a very enjoyable and effective way of preparing for, and taking advantage of, the visit. So much more can be appreciated of the appearance and behaviour of the different species than by studying a 2-D picture and behaviour description in the guide. Besides which, for many species, the calls and songs of the birds can be absorbed from the video at the same time.

 But the video does not only give us an optimum presentation of the birds going about their normal activities of feeding, preening squabbling etc. It also takes us deeper into a very important and mostly hidden part of their lives, the raising of young. The sequences which show the mothers attending their chicks, from ungainly hatchlings to first solo flights, in those incredibly perfect tiny nests, are just fantastic. The more so because most of us have never had the opportunity or patience or skill to even detect and view the nest, let alone follow the whole process of rearing young from start to finish. The scenes of the mothers arriving at their nests and triggering the hatchlings into upstretched pleading for their share or of the mothers stuffing their enormous beaks deep down those infant throats and then pounding the meal in like a jack hammer are nothing short of dramatic. And the excitement of the now charming, fully-fledged young, vibrating their wings in a precarious frenzy of enthusiasm to take to the air, is palpable and unforgettable. I congratulate and thank you, Carlo, for enabling us to witness this drama by finding those nests, setting up the cameras and lighting, returning day after day with sufficient stealth and skill to avoid the mother abandoning the young and taking those extraordinary sequences.

 At the level of serious study of bird life, as our friend Federico commented after seeing it, the video also offers a lot to ornithologists and students of ornithology. There is so much brilliant detail of behaviour, all of which can be reviewed over and over and frame by frame, that the video also offers an excellent tool for helping to understand many important aspects of how hummingbirds live.

 I did spot a couple of minor and readily fixed details which should be corrected. Angel de Sol not Algel de Sol and it would be useful to indicate the gender for the female of the Crimson Topaz, which is so different from the male.  The other small detail which I did notice was the shape distortion produced by the very close-up photographs at feeders. The hermits for example were rather big-headed and had exceptionally large bills. But I cannot imagine how this could be fixed and I imagine it has to be accepted as an inevitable consequence of having the bird practically on one’s nose! At a couple of points, I thought I detected a foreign bird song and, if that is the case, it might be useful to edit it out to avoid confusing the actor’s voice. None of these comments detract from the outstanding brilliance and professionalism of this superb production.

Venezuela, Paraíso de Aves         ChrisSHARPE                                                                                              www.birdvenezuela.com

Carlos Ferraro Russo & MiguelLentino                                                                  Armitano Editores, 1992. 250 pp. 213 colour photographs
                                                                                                                     A nice coffee-table book showing the splendour of the Venezuelan avifauna with superb photographs by Carlo Ferraro and text by ornithologist Miguel Lentino. Available in English, Spanish and German

200 Venezuelan Birds                                                                                       By CarloFerraro                                                                                                      A CD-ROM comprising spectacular 10-second video footage for each of 200 Venezuelan bird species.  

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CUSTOMERS

Dear Carlo:                                                                                                       I watched your “Life of The Life of Birds in the Neotropics” DVD last night again and must again compliment you on your products. The photography and subject matter is always outstanding. I have many birding DVDs from various sources worldwide and yours take some beating.                                                                                     Kindest regards,                                                                                        John Gilchrist                                                                                             South Africa

Hi Carlo:                                                                                                     Received the DVDS today                                                                               They  were great clear pictures + close up of the birds, I'm glad I brought them... When you have finished this project are you going  to take more pictures of all the other birds, in Venezuela !!!                                                                                          Robert Ballis                                                                                              Australia

Dear Carlo,
We just received the DVD of the hummingbirds, and it is fabulous!                            Sincerely,
Audre Newman                                                                                         California, USA

Hello Carlo:                                                                                                   We saw some of your  works in a trip to Caracas. We want to purchase 4 titles. Congratulations on your beautiful films.                                                                 Karilyn Sheppard                                                                                         VicePresident                                                                                   www.trinwetlands.org