Posts in Category: St. Augustine Alligator Farm
Grooming
Tricolored Heron, St. Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery, St. A, Florida
Birds spend a lot of time on maintaining their feathers: grooming, preening, oiling, rearranging, etc. Not surprising. When they are not hunting, feeding, breeding, or feeding young…they are probably grooming. This Tricolored Heron at St. Augustine Alligator Farm’s wild bird rookery is busy on the underside of his wing. A long neck comes in handy that way.
Nikon P900 at 1000mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 400 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom.
Passing the twig: courtship
Roseate Spoonbills, St. Augustine Alligator Farm, St A. Florida
In late April and early May each year I have two events. The Florida Birding and Photo Fest and the Biggest Week in American Birding at Magee Marsh and Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge in Ohio. Essentially I go direct from one to the other and have about 15 days of excellent bird photography…mostly nesting waders in Florida, and migrating warblers and songbirds in Ohio. I also come back from the two trips with well over 1000 images…keepers that is…I probably take close to 4000 frames. I share a few images from the events, while I am there, but clearly I have a lot more that I have not shared. All of which is to explain why, after several weeks, we are back to a Florida image for today’s post, though I have been back in Maine for several days now. 🙂
These two Roseate Spoonbills at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery spent most of a day attempting to build a nest in this low Mangrove…an odd place to begin with. They abandoned the attempt overnight, but while they were active, I had a chance to observe courtship and nest building activity up close. Here the male is passing a bit of viney twig to the female.
Nikon P900 at 400mm equivalent field of view (I told you they were close). 1/125th @ ISO 125 @ f5. Processed and cropped slightly for composition in Lightroom.
Balancing act
Great Egrets, St Augustine Alligator Farm, St A Florida
For me what makes this image is the sky behind the birds. 🙂 Ideal light for white birds. Great Egrets at the St Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery.
Nikon P900. Processed in Lightroom.
Backlit Cattle Egret in breeding plumage
Cattle Egret, St. Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery, St A, Florida
For most of the year, the Cattle Egret is the stumpy, chunky, shambling, recently immigrated, relative of our native Great and Snowy Egrets…not much to look at, and still on probation as a US citizen as far as birders are concerned. But for a few short weeks in spring, during nesting season, I think the Cattle Egret is the most beautiful of our resident egrets. The orangey-brown crown features and stripe down the back, as well as the bright orange bill, set of the white plumage to a turn.
This male was guarding the nest while his mate when out to feed. St. Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery. Nikon P900 at 880mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom.
Flight! Happy Sunday.
Great Egret, St Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery, St A, Florida
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
I was back at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery yesterday morning early to have one last crack at flight shots. The birds are so close, and there is a lot of coming and going so there are not many moments when there isn’t at least one bird in the air. Great place to practice…or just to appreciate the beauty of flight. These are mostly big birds. Great Egrets and Wood Storks predominate…and both are great flyers. Graceful, elegant, with beautiful plumage. When you catch one, as I have here, with the light behind it, it is as beautiful a sight as I hope to see in this world.
The persistence of flight dreams in our kind, and our general fascination with flight, when taken with our images of angels, might lead us to think that there are wings in our future. I actually find no indication of that at all in the Bible, and it is certainly not in the Gospels, but that does not stop us from dreaming. Flight, we seem to think, would be the final freedom. Â Personally I would like to be able to love as well, and as naturally, and as beautifully as a bird flies. I think that would be the final freedom! When I look with my generous eye, I do not see you or myself with wings, beautiful as that might be…I see you (and myself) as a unconditionally loving person. That is the generous view. Leave the wings for the birds. I will admire flight, and give it its due as beauty, but give me love any day!
Happy Sunday.
Landing. Great Egret
Great Egret, St Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery
Coming in for a landing, calling all the way. Great Egret, St Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery, on St Augustine Florida. A Great Egret is one of the most graceful of the big birds in flight…not so much in landing. 🙂
Nikon P900 in my custom Birds in Flight mode. Shutter preferred. 1/1250th @ ISO 125 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage.
Feed me! Great Egret chicks.
Great Egret chicks in the nest. St. Augustine Alligator Farm, St Augustine FL
The Florida Birding and Photo Fest is a week later this year than last, and you can really see it in the age of the Great Egret nestlings. Last year there were many nests of newly hatched Egrets. This year, some of the nestlings are ready to fledge. This is another of the “laugh-right-out-loud” images that yesterday’s Day Poem was based on. When I first pulled it up for processing, I did indeed laugh out loud. 🙂
Nikon P900 at 1100mm equivalent field of view. 1/800th @ ISO 100 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom.
This is the Day Poem I mentioned.
an image will pop up on my tablet
that makes me laugh out loud.
or a chipmunk looking clownish…
it may be the way the clouds paint
the landscape with shadow, or
an unguarded expression caught
unaware on a familiar face…some
chance juxtaposition of unlikely
elements within the frame…some
fraction of a second frozen and held
up for our attention, our admiration,
our amusement and delight. That
is the real power of photography… to
wake our wonder, our compassion, our
soul, by a gentle tugging on the eye.
what keep me out and about daily
with a camera in my hand.
Roseate Spoonbill. Angel unaware
Roseate Spoonbill, St Augustine Alligator Farm, St Augustine Florida
In April, May, and into June, the wild bird rookery at the St Augustine Alligator Farm and Zoological Park in St Augustine, Florida ranks among the top attractions nationwide for wildlife photographers. Hundreds of pairs of nesting birds, Wood Storks; Great, Snowy, and Cattle Egrets; Tricolored and Little Blue Herons;Â and increasing numbers of Roseate Spoonbills, translate to constant action. Birds on the nest, birds building nests, birds feeding young, birds displaying and posing, birds constantly in the air, going off to feed or bringing in nesting materials. And, of course, hundreds of big and small bull Alligators in the waters below the nesting trees. It is, to put it mildly, spectacular. I have the privilege of teaching Point and Shoot Nature Photography workshops at the Florida Birding and Photo Fest each year in April, so I get to visit the Farm at the height of the season. And I often get to introduce new people to the farm. That is really fun!
This is a Roseate Spoonbill on its way in to the nesting area, maybe 40 feet overhead. The lighting was ideal, the camera functioned well, and my timing was close enough to catch this angel unawares.
Nikon P900 at 300mm equivalent field of view. Sports mode. 1/800th @ ISO 100 @ f5. Processed and cropped slightly for scale in Lightroom.
Portrait of a Suitor
Snowy Egret, St Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery, St Augustine FL
Ah the Gator Farm in Spring. Bull alligators roaring loud enough to shake the boardwalk. Birds in breeding plumage putting on displays. Storks and Egrets gathering nesting materials and flying them in to prospective mates. Birds feeding chicks in the nest. Raging hormones in aid of a new crop of life! This Snowy Egret in fully in the swing of things…doing his best to attract a viable mate. As a photographer, there is nothing quite like being immersed in the rookery as you are at the St Augustine Alligator Farm. This intimate portrait could not have been taken many other places.
Nikon P900 at just under 1000mm equivalent field of view. 1/2000th @ f5.6 @ ISO 100. -.7EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom.
Special Delivery!
Great Egret. St Augustine Alligator Farm, St Augustine FL
I had a lot of fun experimenting with Sports Mode for flight shots at the St Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery in Florida. A lot of fun, and, of course, a lot of potential frustration. I was shooting side by side, most often, with folks with DSLRs and medium long lenses…and I could hear the machine gun fire of their shutters as they tracked birds across the open gap above the boardwalk. I was limited to my 7 frames each time I got a bird in focus, which was not on every pass. Still, I suspect that when all is said and done, and the post processing dust settled, that I got as many keepers as anyone on the boardwalk…and even if I did not…the number I did manage was totally satisfying. And I did have enough faith in the camera and my own skill to ward off both frustration and DSLR envy on the boardwalk. 🙂 This bird is bringing in nesting material.
This shot is cropped only slightly, for composition, and was taken hand held in Sports Mode on the Nikon P900 at 600mm equivalent field of view. The birds are close at the rookery and moving fast, so, when trying to catch birds in flight, shorter focal lengths are called for. You would never even find the bird in motion at the long end of the zoom. 1/500th @ ISO 100 @ f5.
Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.