[pluies]

Sure, cameras in todays smartphones are great and take beautiful pictures, but bird photography is pretty much their achille's heel - tiny fast-moving objects would require much better zooms, higher iso, and lower shutter lag than what's currently available with smartphones.

[pvaldes]

A professional researcher should have a decent real camera at least. Trap cameras will register everything of that size in the area and can be set to register non stop for six months, so the excuse of "birds are afraid of us and fly" is not really solid.

Some cheap trap cameras are just too shitty to be useful. They just need to keep trying. But not a single good photo still, after decades of people trying to find it, carries a strong suspicion of extinction.