Posts in Category: Florida
Green Heron
Green Heron, Anhinga Trail, Everglades NP
The Green Heron is another amazing bird, a bit more subtle. and certainly way more common, than the Purple Gallinule of a few days ago, but just as brilliant in its own way. I love the blends and shades of green and brown and yellow…and I certainly photograph every one I get a chance to. This bird was super cooperative…busy hunting small creatures from the water below it, and pretty much unaware of us standing 15 feet above it on the boardwalk at Anhinga Trail…or unconcerned if it was aware. We watched it take prey several times it finally flew off to look for better fishing.
Sony HX400V at 540mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/800th @ ISO 800 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Big Cypress National Preserve
Cypress Hummock, Big Cypress NP, FL
Yesterday we were treated to a walk (wade) in Big Cypress National Preserve. We went with Everglades Nature Tours, the only company licensed for off the trail walking in the Big Cypress. As I hinted, it was actually more of a wade than a walk as we were in water most of the time. But we got to see the inside of 3 Cypress Heads, or hummocks, and that is something most never do. We found orchids, not blooming this time of year, but full of promise for the spring, and we got up-close and in among the biggest cypress in the neighborhood…those that grow in the ponds at the center of the hummocks where it is always wet. This collage shows a vertical panorama and a horizontal view. It is both strange and wonderful country.
Sony HX400V. Vertical sweep panorama and in-camera HDR. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet. Assembled in Phototastic Pro.
Purple Gallinule!
Purple Gallinule, Everglades Wildlife Management Area, Miami FL
No north American bird is as absolutely unlikely as the Purple Gallinule…or that is what I think! I mean, look at it. Such outlandish color. Really? How are we supposed to take this seriously? And I have never had views of Purple Gallinule like I had yesterday from Everglades Nature Tour’s airboat on the Everglades Wildlife Management area west of Miami. We stopped the boat and Captain Ozzie whistled up the Gallinule and it came up to a few feet from from the boat, feeding all around us on the lily pads, climbing on the reeds, etc. Quite a show. Of course the light was terrible. Intermittent rain…just enough to keep me damp and make me very conscious of my camera’s non-weather-proof status…but such a treat! And the Sony again pulled it off at ISO 3200. 🙂
Sony HX400V at 275mm equivalent field of view. ISO 3200 @ f5 @ 1/1250th. Shutter preferred. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
First Everglades Sunset
Everglades National Park Sunset
I did not get to Homestead until 4 pm, and I considered just resting after a long day of travel, but by 5:30 I had caught up with the day and decided at least to go find a sunset over the Everglades. I barely made it at that. The sun sinks fast here in the tropics (all things being relative, South Florida is our tropics 🙂 It was worth the effort, I think. This is just barely into the Everglades National Park, just past the entrance station…but it is as far as I got.
Sony HX400V. In-camera HDR. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Florida Sandhill
It is Friday, and we face a day of steady rain in Maine, slowly reducing our 3 feet of snow on the ground to slush. Depressing. So I declare it Florida Friday, and will take you back a month to my last trip to Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands at Viera for this Florida Sandhill Crane. As I have mentioned before, Florida Sandhills are far different than the wild, almost prehistoric creatures of the Southwest of the same name. In Florida if you stop your car on the side of the road to look at Sandhills, they will cross the road to see what you are doing. No really! One floridian told me, when we were talking about it, that there is nothing like walking into the kitchen and opening the drapes over the back deck sliding doors to find a Sandhill Crane inches from the glass looking in at you. So, getting shots like this of Sandhills in Florida is not as tricky as it might seem to anyone familiar with, say, New Mexico Sandhills.
Canon SX50HS. Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1200mm equivalent field of view. ISO 800 @1/1000th @ f6.5. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Great Blue Heron on the Phone
Okay. Not really a phone call from a Great Blue Heron…but an image of a GBH taken with my Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone behind the eyepiece of my ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. The tiny sensor in the phone is ideal, in many ways, for digiscoping (as this application of the spotting scope is called) and I have an excellent adapter to hold the phone in the right place from Novagrade.
Of course the winter sun-light of Florida, and the inherent beauty of the bird, as well as the realatively close approach possible at the Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands at Viera, all contribute the image.
As above: ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. 15-45x Vario eyepiece. Novagrade Universal Smartphone Adapter. Samsung Galaxy S4 phone. ISO 50 @ 1/1550th of a second. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Woodies in Company
This is another shot from the pool of mixed waders I had the privilege of observing at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge last week. As I mentioned in a few posts, I lost a good deal of my respect for Wood Storks on my visit to Gatorland in Orlando. At Gatorland the Storks have turned into the kind of panhandlers that make you uncomfortable on the streets of a major city. They walk right up on the boardwalks with the tourists, and are aggressive in their attempts to cage a handout. Out on Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, in their natural habitat, surrounded by the other birds of the marsh, they are much more attractive…if the word attractive can in any way be applied to such a magnificently ugly bird! It is a case of their being so ugly they are beautiful, if you know what I mean.
Digiscoped with the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. 15-56x Vario eyepiece. Digidapter for ZEISS. Canon SD320HS. ISO 160 @ 1/1000th. 1230mm equivalent field of view. f5 as determined by the camera. Processed in Snapseed and Photo Editor by dev.macgyver on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Momentary Panic
I had the privilege and pleasure of observing and photographing a feeding swarm of big waders just off Blackpoint Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge last week. There were many White Ibis, a few Glossy Ibis, a good number of Roseate Spoonbills, Great and White Egrets, and half a dozen Wood Storks. The Ibis and Snowy Egrets would bunch up right by the road, feeding on some new spawn, for moments at a time, until the pressure got to great and they would all panic, fly up and to the other side of the pool, only to work their way back into the bunch over the next 10 minutes. It happened a dozen times in the hour and a half I watched.
I caught a panic here with the Sony NEX 3NL and the 16-50mm zoom at about 70mm equivalent. ISO 200 @ 1/250th @ f16. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014. The image had a very mild HDR treatment. You might remember that I posted a more pulled back view of this pool a few days ago.
I have assembled many of the images from my time at the feeding pool into a slide show. Enjoy.
Herons in Love
Though the light was miserable, and it was actually drizzling a bit, I set up on the palm-nesting Herons at Viera Wetlands. It was our last morning in the field for the Space Coast Birding Festival, and we left the hotel early to get to Viera just as there was enough light for photopraphy. We had not counted on the rain. Still, who is going to pass up Great Blue Herons nesting on the broken off tops of palm trunks? I was using my compact digiscoping rig…the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL and the 15-56x Vario eyepiece with the Digidapter for ZEISS mount. I had just received a newish Canon SD320HS to try behind the lens. This is, in fact, a 2012 model in the Canon HS series, but it was the last with a 5x zoom (shorter zooms work better for digiscoping…longer zooms often do not work at all).
I was set up on this pair, photographing the courting behavior, when suddenly it went beyond courting. I was really too close to catch the full action, but zooming out on the camera give me dark edges in the images…so I got more of an intimate view than I might have chosen. Here you see that he has a grip on her breeding plume with his beak and is holding her so tightly that it has pulled the skin and feathers around to backside of her neck. This is the height of the action, but I have the whole sequence. I have made it into a slide show with music by Bughici (courtesy of the free music archive).
Digiscoping rig as above. About 1400mm equivalent. ISO 100 @ 1/50th. f5 effective, determined by the camera. Processed in Snapseed and Photo Editor by dev.macgyver on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Three in a tree. Odd man out.
I could not resist “three in a tree”, but “odd man out” also seems too apt to pass up, so I used them both 🙂 This is Viera Wetlands (Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands) near Melbourne Florida, and we have, of course, two White Ibis and a Little Blue Heron. And a tree. And a curiously cloud-dappled sky, for that matter. Apart from the interesting birds, and bird behavior, the 4 elements against the sky make a pleasing composition. Or that is what I think.
Canon SX50HS. Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1200mm equivalent field of view. ISO 125 @ 1/1000th @ f6.5. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.