Posts in Category: p&s 4 wildlife
Great Blue on the Nest
In January, the Great Blue Herons of Viera Wetlands in Florida are building nests in the tops of palm trees, paying attention to the placement of each stick. They are fun to watch. Such big birds with such interesting plumage, and they get themselves into some interesting forms while they build.
This is a digiscoped shot…taken with the Sony Rx100 behind the 15-56x zoom eyepiece on a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. The Sony is my first large sensor Point and Shoot, and the first large sensor camera I have used for digiscoping. (Large is relative here. The Sony, like the Nikon 1 series, has a 1 inch sensor. The 1 inch sensor has three time the surface area of the common Point and Shoot sensors, but is still only 1/8th the surface area of a full frame 35mm size sensor. Still, the difference in depth of field is dramatic. The very short focal length lenses on true Point and Shoots generally give digiscoped images a unique look. The bird fills the frame, speaking of great magnification, but the depth of field is well beyond what you would expect at that image scale. You loose some of that by going to the larger 1 inch sensor and its correspondingly longer focal length zoom. I am still getting used to it. You can see here that keeping the bird’s head in sharp focus meant letting the tail go soft.
Camera as above. Program. About 2400mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 125. f13 effective. Manual focus.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Early Morning Pelican Flyover
I was standing along Blackpoint Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge on a Sunday morning, soon after dawn, taking pics of some ibises and egrets in the corner of one of the ponds when an American White Pelican flew overhead. I turned and saw several others on their way in. Sports Mode is never more than a click away on the Canon SX50HS, and I got of a burst as a bird approached, panning with it, This shot is pretty much straight overhead, and my head was tipped back about as far as it would go. 
I really like the early light here, following the bird, and illuminating and modeling the body under the wings and the head over them…and the touch of translucence at the base of the wings themselves. The bird strikes me as “stately” or “proud” in its glide.
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. 190mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 500. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Cropped slightly for composition and scale.
Reddish Egret at Work
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Okay, I will admit it. I am strangely attracted to Reddish Egrets. Attracted because I really like to watch them feed. It never fails to bring a smile, as they wobble about on loose knees, generally well off kilter. Strangely because, well, because Reddish Egrets are so strange…every movement exaggerated and slightly awkward…and yet the whole fits together into a kind of dance that has its own grace.
And then there is the bird itself, with its ragged red neck and head above your standard heron-gray body. It always looks like it is wearing a bad purple wig.
These images are from along the Wild Birds Unlimited trail off Blackpoint Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island National Wildlife Drive.
Canon SX50HS. Sports Mode. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
January Brown Anole
The Brown Anole is an introduced species in Florida, unlike the native Green Anole. Unfortunately is very invasive. There has been a colony of Brown Anoles living in the rocks along the pond by the restrooms on Black Point Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge for as long as I have been going there (10 years). They are were much more active during my few April visits, but on warm days in January you can still see them sunning themselves on the rocks. I like the curl of this one’s tail.
Canon SX50HS in Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Ibises in the Dawn
Five white Ibises and a Glossy coming in to land just after dawn at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. I had to look up the plural of Ibis. Turns out that in the vernacular the members of group of individual Ibis are Ibises. The group that includes all Ibises is, however, more properly Ibides or Ibide. Such is the mess that is our Latinized Anglo Saxon French hodgepodge of a language. 
White Ibises are common on the Refuge in January, but, until I looked closely at this image, I would have told you I had not seen a Glossy on this trip.
This is an example of how fast and flexible the Canon SX50HS is. I was taking sunrise pics of the waders in a small channel at Stop 2 on Blackpoint Wildlife Drive when I saw a group of birds coming in. I spun the control dial to Sports Mode, backed off on the zoom for framing, got focus on them, and got off a burst of shots as they passed close. Not bad! You can see the far out-of-focus shadows of a foreground palm they were about to fly behind on the left side of the frame.
Canon SX50HS as above. 655mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 500. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Cropped slightly on the right to eliminate random bird wings.
Mockingbird
While the big birds…the Wood Storks, herons, egrets and ibises…certainly get most of the attention at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge (or the ducks if you are duck fancier), there are, of course, lots of passerines on the Refuge as well. There are still Florida Scrub Jays if you know where to look, and many thousand Palm Warblers in January when I visit. Common Yellowthroats chitter in the mangrove at just about every stop. And then there are Northern Mockingbirds. This specimen jumped up to the top of the mangrove lining Blackpoint Drive just as I was pulling out onto the drive from a stop, so, of course, I had to stop the car, roll down the window and catch a few shots.
This is 1200mm equivalent field of view…the longest optical reach of the Canon SX50HS’ zoom…handheld from inside the car. With the wonderful Florida early morning light picking out every detail, and the classic pose, it makes wonderful portrait of the bird.
f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Skimmer!
Last year when I visited the Space Coast Birding Festival there were hundreds of Black Skimmers on the oyster bars at the fishing access on the Merritt Island side of the new bridge. This year there were none. I suspect the oyster bars were somehow scrubbed during the year. I had despaired of trying the Canon SX50HS’ new Sports Mode, which I have found effective on birds in flight, on Skimmers, at least on this trip. But then, on my last visit to the Refuge, after packing the booth up on Sunday, there was a single Black Skimmer fishing in the largest of the ponds on Blackpoint Drive in the late afternoon light. It was circling a largish Mangrove island, round and round, and I had my chance.
Skimmers are BIG. I had only ever really seen them at a distance, and against the backdrop of the open ocean or a large bay. In the pond at Blackpoint, with other birds and close-by vegetation for comparison, it was suddenly clear just how big a Skimmer is. And, of course, Skimmers are fast and agile. That I had known already, which is why I knew they would test the limits of the SX50HS. This particular Skimmer, however, made it much easier because of its regular pattern. It made is circuit of the island at least a hundred times while I watched, and I could pretty well predict when and where it was going to skim. I could also pick the bird up early, get a focus lock, and pan with it before committing to a burst of exposures. Once the shutter was down though, I was panning so fast that even the glimpses I get with the SX50HS between exposures were not enough to guarantee I could keep the bird in the frame. So I shot a lot of frames! I also backed off from full zoom (to about 1000mm equivalent) to give myself a better chance of keeping the bird in the frame.
This sequence shows what happens when a Skimmer hits something that is not a fish…or hits a fish that is too large…I am not sure which. It shows behavior which I had not seen while watching skimmers in flight, probably because the bird recovers really fast. The camera caught it in several different sequences.
Following the bird and attempting to catch it in action was a lot of fun, but I was not really sure I was getting anything I would want to keep until I got back to the hotel and looked at the images in Lightroom. Not bad!
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. 1024mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 640. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Bittern in Morning Sun
I really like seeing Bitterns. For me it is a rare site. I have only ever seen them in New Jersey and Florida. Last year on my Space Coast Birding Festival trip I looked without success for one at Viera Wetlands, but I was delighted to see the same American Bittern twice at Merritt Island NWR, two different days. This year, I saw a Bittern at Viera (this one) and two different Bitterns at Merritt Island. Such wealth!
This specimen moved through the reeds and grasses about 30 feet down the embankment at the edge of the pond for 30 minutes as I watched. All I had to do is wait for the rare occasions when it broke cover.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. About 1000mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Woodie!
On Sunday morning I was at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge for sunrise. I stopped at the 2nd numbered pull-out on Blackpoint Wildlife Drive for pics of the sunrise itself. There were two birds there…a Great Egret and a Tricolored Heron, both of which apparently frequent the small pools below the pull-out this year as I have seen both there on just about every trip around Black Point Drive. This time however, in the space of 20 minutes as I watched the sunrise, well over a hundred birds flew in to share those small pools. Most were White Ibis, but there were also many Snowy Egrets, a few more Great Egrets, a few more Tricolored Herons, and one Wood Stork.
I had lots of fun playing with the dawn light and the various birds as they feed in the pools below me. This is about as “handsome” a shot of a Wood Stork as you are going to find. The soft golden light of the dawn brings out all the character of the bird. Though Woodie in this image looks nicely posed and sedate…it was actually feeding rapidly and moving all the time. I had to catch it in this pose.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/320th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Peacock and Skipper
The title is accurate, even if it sounds like a another crime show featuring partners with a complicated relationship. Fiery Skipper, one of the most common of the skipper butterflies, and White Peacock, certainly very common in January in Florida. Of course you don’t often see them posed like this in the same frame. 🙂 This is along one of the dyke roads at Viera Wetlands (Rich Grissom Memorial Wetlands) in Viera Florida.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1800mm equivalent field of view (1200mm optical plus 1.5x Digital Tel-converter.) f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 250. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.