Posts in Category: wildlife
I love Reddish Egrets!
Reddish Egret. Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, Merritt Island NWR, FL
Yes I do love Reddish Egrets. The way the dance about while hunting. The improbable aspects their bodies assume. The thing they do with their wings just before striking a fish (not always…but often…called “canopy feeding” as they make a shadow in the water so they can see through the surface). Their speed and awkward agility. They are fun to watch. Late yesterday, out on Blackpoint Drive, a group of birders and photographers were treated to a classing Reddish show as two Egrets hunted across a pool the size of a basketball court. The late afternoon light was spectacular. I tried Sports Mode on the Egrets…and it made catching the wing thing and fish strikes almost easy. The camera locked focus on the Egret and all I had to do is keep the bird near the center of the field as it pranced and posed and wait for the action I wanted. The camera kept the bird in focus. Totally amazing! And it yielded my best shots of Reddish action yet…and not just one shot…but a dozen or more definite keepers! You have to know how fleeting these poses are to appreciate how well the camera did…at least in my hands 🙂
Sony HX400V in Sports Mode. 991mm equivalent field of view. 1/640th @ ISO 160 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet. I plan a post on Point and Shoot Nature Photographer on shooting active birds in Sports Mode that will undoubtedly feature more of the Reddish Egret shots. Keep your eye open.
Viera Red-shouldered Hawk
Red-shouldered Hawk. Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands, Viera FL
Next week I will travel to the tropics for the first time: Honduras and Pico Bonito Lodge, on a ZEISS VICTORY SF Experience trip, along with 20 other people. I am one of the “leaders” so I am working on putting together a light-weight, compact, spotting scope/digiscoping kit. Yesterday afternoon I tested it out a Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands, one of the best places in central Florida for bird photography. This Red-shouldered Hawk is regular there, using the same perches around the observation tower on the inner driving loop. It appeared on schedule and I got to photograph it to my heart’s content…testing various options on the camera and scope. It is a magnificent bird…on a small, compact scale. A fitting subject for a compact digiscoping outfit. 🙂
ZEISS DiaScope 65FL with the Canon SD320 behind the 30x wide-field eyepiece, for the equivalent field of view of a 1950mm lens. 1/640th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Snowy Dawn. Happy Sunday!
Snowy Egret at dawn. Merritt Island NWR, FL
Yeah…not that kind of snow 🙂 Still in Florida. First light on Blackpoint Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in January, when the birds are in close to the road, is often spectacular. The birds are between you and the rising sun, and if you catch the light just right, the images glow. This Snowy Egret was feeding about as close to the road as a bird can get, and the light was right! 🙂
And there is something about being out when the day is young, catching the birds at their breakfast, that lends zest to day, and to life. We begin again, all over again, with the adventure! I think that is the key to living a life of the spirit in the flesh…every day is a new adventure…and no matter what comes, it will be, before it is over, good. Some days are a trial and some days are just full of blessing. Or maybe I should say: Some days we are blessed with trials, and some days we are just blessed. Most days, these days, I am simply blessed…enjoying the adventure. I look forward from the dawn of each day with hope, with expectation, with joy, and with thanksgiving…I may not always show it…but I do. In a little over an hour I will leave for maybe my last early morning circuit of Blackpoint Drive for this trip. What good thing does God in the spirit have in store for today? Happy Sunday!
Snail’s Last Ride
Limpkin with Apple Snail, Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands, FL
Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands in Viera Florida is a fairly reliable place to see Limpkin…a rare and local bird…highly specialized on a diet of Apple Snails. You only find Limpkin in healthy fresh water marsh where the snails live. I watch this Limpkin successfully find and devour 20 snails in as many minutes. That bill is specially designed to find the snail in the mud, and then hook the snail out of its shell for eating. You find the empty Apple Snail shells along the edge of the marsh, and you know a Limpkin has been working the area. This photo was taken on a darkish day at Viera, and pushed the limits of the Sony camera. Still!
Sony HX400V at 588mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/500th @ ISO 3200 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Dawn Mix
Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, Merritt Island NWR.
Early morning action along Blackpoint Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. We were out for the World Digiscoper Meet competition at the Space Coast Birding Festival. This is pool of mixed waders: Snowy and Great Egrets, Wood Storks, and White Ibis.
In camera HDR. Sony HX400V. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Life Armadillo!
Armadillo. Blackpoint Wildlife Drive. Merritt Island NWR, FL
This is my life Armadillo…oh I have seen them dead in the road…but that does not count. This one was very much alive…looking like a cross between a steampunk rabbit and pig…schuttering alongside the exit road from Blackpoint Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island NWR. My first! What a treat. I took photos out the passenger side car window…very awkwardly…but it actually let me park and get out. Still not the photo I wanted…it would bury its head in the grass…but not bad for a first.
Sony HX400V at 252mm equivalent field of view. 1/640th @ ISO 800 @ f5. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Great Backlit Egret
Great Egret, Gatorland, Orlando FL
If you are into bird photography, Gatorland, near Orlando, in winter and spring is always worth a visit. As a senior citizen I even get in for less than half price. Such a deal. The deal at Gatorland is close ups of “wild” birds…mostly Egrets and Herons that nest around the Breeding Pool…where over 300 Alligators are kept for breeding. There are some BIG Alligators in there! And birds. Wherever you find Alligators in large numbers, birds will build a rookery. They feel relatively safe from most predators with the Alligators patrolling the waters below them. You may have noticed the quotation marks around “wild” in the sentence above. The nesting birds at Gatorland are not, of course, captive…but they are so used to humans and human hand-outs that they can not, in my opinion, be classed as wild either. Gatorland is a place where you can take full frame photos of a Snowy Egret from 2 feet with your phone. I know. I did it. This Great Egret, coming into breeding plumage, was something closer to 4 feet from me, standing on one of the boardwalk rails. This is what the Gatorland experience is all about for the bird photographer. I could not resist the effective back-lighting.
Sony HX400V at 414mm equivalent field of view. In camera HDR. Nominal exposure: 1/200th @ ISO 100 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Purple Gallinules Meet You at the Airport!
Purple Gallinule, Shark Valley, Everglades NP
In honor of being on my way back to Florida (I am currently in Newark waiting on a connection), another Purple Gallinule. If you don’t get the reference…one of my girls’ favorite children’s books was “Gila Monsters Meet You At the Airport.”
Sony HX400V. 705mm equivalent field of view. 1/1250th @ ISO1000 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Great Egret Agression
Great Egret. Big Cypress National Preserve
After my Walk on the Wildside with Everglades Nature Tours in Big Cypress National Preserve, we spent the afternoon exploring Turner River Road between the Tamiami Trail and Alligator Alley…an interesting trek through the depths of Big Cypress. We stopped when we saw birds or wildlife. This Great Egret was putting on quite a show. Egrets are not generally territorial…they are colony nesters and you see many nests in the same tree…but this bird had issues with the other birds in its tree. You can not see them in this frame, but there was a White Ibis directly above the Egret and one directly below it.
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 80 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Yellow-crowned Night Heron
Yellow-crowned Night Heron, Shark Valley, Everglades NP
Though I know of at least a few Maine records for Yellow-crowned Night Heron, I have never seen one here…I see them in Georgia, Texas, Ohio, and Florida…and not often at that. This specimen was along West Road at Shark Valley in the Everglades. Who can resist? Night Herons always look grumpy to me, and the Yellow-crown more than most…like they are having a bad day and have no reason to think it will get any better…or that tomorrow will be anything but more of the same. 🙁 This bird manages, as I see it, to rise to a stoic look…which is pretty good natured for a Night Heron. 🙁
Sony HX400V at 950mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 640 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.