Posts in Category: Florida
Feeding Pool, Merrit Island NWR.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s Roseate Spoonbill post, on the final day of the Space Coast Birding Festival, out on Blackpoint Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, the wading birds massed in a small pool right next to the road, feeding with frenzy on some kind of fresh spawn. In this tiny pool, there were large numbers of Roseate Spoonbills, Snowy and Great Egrets, Glossy and White Ibis, as well as a dozen Wood Storks. It was most impressive. The kind of sight that has to bring a smile at the least, and, for most of us, a giddy grin. 🙂
You can see numbers of all the species mentioned in this moderate telephoto shot of one corner of the pool. It is perhaps more effective in conveying the experience than a full wide angle shot…or than the panoramas I also managed at the pool.
Canon SX50HS. Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 160mm equivalent field of view. ISO 100 @ 1/1000th @ f5.6. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Spoonbill Calling
Among the great birds in Sunday’s feeding frenzy at Merritt Island NWR, there were many Spoonbills. They were the first I had seen on this trip close enough to really enjoy and photograph. They are, in Florida, just coming into full breeding plumage, and this year they are particularly pink! This bird took time out from feeding to assert his ownership of the pool 🙂
Digiscoped with the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL and the Canon SD320HS behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece, using the Digidapter for ZEISS. ISO125 @ 1/640th @ f5.6 (determined by the camera). 1428mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014. Additional color adjustment in Photo Editor by dev.macgyver.
Handsome Couple
Yesterday, when we made one last visit to Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands in Melbourne (aka Viera Wetlands, in the rain, as it would happen)…this pair of Great Blue Herons had the nest all built and were actively mating. The light was a challenge for digiscoping, but I managed a whole sequence of mating behaviour. This is, clearly, the stand and stare phase. Which is followed by bill clicking, which is followed by his mounting her…which is followed by making the new generation.
Digiscoped with the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL with the Canon SD320HS behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece using the Digidapter for ZEISS. ISO 400 @ 1/160th @ f5 (determined by the camera). Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 using, among other things, the HDR Scene filter.
Fan Palm. Happy Sunday!
For us northerners (or at least for me), there is nothing more emblematic of being in the south-land, in the sub-tropics, in Mediterranean climes, than the Palm tree. I feel it in, say, San Diego, but it is especially evident (again, to me) in the forest understory of fan palms in the dappled winter sun filtered through live oak draped in hanging fern. (Of course, in the Southeastern sub-tropics, there is sweet tea too 🙂
This is an HDR treatment, to emphasize what the light is doing with the palm. Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom. 70mm equivalent field of view. ISO 200 @ 1/80th @ f6.3. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
And for the Sunday Thought. I am always reminded, when I see palms, of the Palm Story Sunday, and how much of the visual imagery of the Bible we northerners can so early miss. The land where Jesus walked is Mediterranean, and as he was fully man, it had to have gotten into his thought. It certainly influenced the words and images the Gospel story is told in. How different would the Bible be, not in its essential truths, but in the telling, if it had been written in England…or, say, Maine? Not that it would matter. Still, the imagery of the Bible is an exotic to me, upstate New York born and bred, and New Englander by choice, as the Fan Palms in the understory, in the filtered winter light of a live oak glade.
Sitting Pretty
Bird-life at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge seems to be somewhat sparce this year…but there are still lots of Tricolored and Little Blue Herons. The area around the restrooms, half way around Black Point Wildlife Drive, is a good place to look for the Tricoloreds perched up…and when the light is right you can get some wonderful shots. This is early morning light, and it is around the corner on the way out of the Refuge, so the light was coming over my shoulder as I set up the digiscoping rig. I was photographing a Tricolored in the Mangrove in the small pond there by the turn, when this one flew in to the top of another Mangrove up on the dike. Perfect placement. Great light! I just swung the scope around, refocused, and took a whole series at different zoom setting for framing from full body to intimate portrait.
Canon SD320HS behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL using the Digidapter for ZEISS mount. Approximately 2000mm equivalent field of view. ISO 160 @ 1/160th @ an effective f5.8 based on the scope. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014. (For those unfamiliar with the technique, digiscoping is taking a photo through the eyepiece of a spotting scope with a digital camera…high magnifications are possible, so you can fill the frame with a bird from much greater distances than you could using conventional photographic lenses.)
Great Egret Showing Off
On my visit this week to the rookery at Gatorland in Orlando Florida, only the Great Egrets were even thinking about getting down to nesting. The males were in breeding plumage and there were already a few females on the nest. And, of course, the males were displaying, as they do when courting. There is a whole routine of bowing and stretching, posing and posturing, all accompanied by a conspicuous display of the fine breeding plumes flying that, in the 1800s, brought these birds close to extension. They were fashionable on ladies hats. Fortunately those who thought they looked better on the living birds prevailed in the end, and from an informal count from moving trains crossing the US and back a few years ago, I might guess that the Great Egret is one of the most abundant species in North America. They are certainly everywhere there is water to wade in and frogs and little fish to catch.
I was particularly struck by the turquoise color of lores in a few of the males at Gatorland, including the one pictured here. I have seen Egrets in full breeding with bright green lores, but never the turquoise. Perhaps it is an intermediate color on the way to becoming the lime green I have seen in other birds…though I do find references in a casual search on Google this morning to both green and blue lores in breeding plumage. Anyone have more information on this?
Canon SX50HS. -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 520mm equivalent field of view. ISO 125 @ 1/1000th @ f6.3. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Pileated Woodpecker !
My colleague and friend, Rich, is learning to be a better digiscoper this week while we work the Space Coast Birding Festival. We went out to Merritt Island NWR yesterday while waiting for the exhibit hall to open and stopped, on a whim, at the Hammock trails. I didn’t have much hope of seeing many birds, but I wanted to get out of the car and walk. We did catch fleeting glimpses of a Pileated Woodpecker, always a treat as they tend to be shy birds. We have them in Maine, a few, but the only ones I have ever been able to photograph have been in Florida. After our encounter, I was telling Rich how difficult they are to photograph in general, and especially how hard to digiscope. “They just do not sit still long enough. You never get a good shot of them.”
Of course, about then we walked up to two other hikers who pointed out a Pileated working some dead trees about 100 feet back into the forest from the trail. They had been watching it long enough, so they passed it on to us. And of course, it made a liar out of me. It worked a small section of tree trunks for 20 minutes as we watched and photographed. Rich even got the scope on it and got some digiscoped shots. It was in fairly dense cover, so the shots are not great…but, hey, it is a Pileated Woodpecker!
These shots are with the Canon SX50HS, and as you can see, they preset a tricky auto focus problem, which the Canon handled very well. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Which just goes to show you: never say never.
On the Nest
After my close up experiences at Gatorland in Orlando yesterday, my colleague and I spent a few hours at the Rich Grissom Memorial Wetlands (otherwise known as Viera Wetlands) in Melbourne. Viera is one of those repurposed settlement pond complexes at a municipal sewage treatment plant. They have added Observation towers and keep the roads along the dikes graded for easy birder access. It is my favorite place to photograph birds in a more natural setting. Waders and ducks, and the lesson common Bitterns, and even Lumpkin, can be found there most days.
This time of year the Great Blue Herons are just beginning to build nests in the broken off tops of the palm trees. They are considerably further away than at Gatorland, but still well within digiscoping range. This image is actually phonescoped, using my Samsung Galaxy S4 on a universal smartphone adapter from Novagrade behind the eyepiece of a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL.
Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Close Encounter
I arrived in Orlando several hours before my colleague on our way to Titusville and the Space Coast Birding Festival, so I picked up the rental car and drove the 20 minutes to Gatorland and it’s world famous rookery. It is justifiably famous. A boardwalk along the edges of a swampy pond gives easy access, in season, to hundreds of nesting pairs of the big waders: Wood Stork, Great and Snowy Egret, Great Blue Heron, Black-Crowned Night Heron, White Ibis, Spoonbill were all present and accounted for yesterday. I suspect they also get Tricolored, Little Blue, and Green Heron in the true breeding season. Only the Great Egrets were showing any signs of nesting this early.
Gatorland is, of course, a great place for bird photography. It is the kind of place where even those with phone and small Point & Shoot cameras can get impressive shots. The birds are close, and since they live pretty much on a diet of hot dog chunks the tourists are encouraged to throw at the alligators, they are beyond tame…the Wood Storks in particular are right up on the boardwalk soliciting, often at arms length, walking among the tourists as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Close encounters are so common that it is, in fact, a bit disturbing. I mean, these birds are not trained and they may not captive, but the are certainly not wild either. I lost a good deal of my respect for Wood Storks yesterday. 🙁
Still I managed to shoot almost 800 frames in two hours at Gatorland. Culled of close duplicates and whittled down to the keepers, that still amounts to over a hundred bird images…from super intimate, macro-esque portraits, to environmental and even a few flight shots.
This is a Great Egret, and this is what I mean by a macro-esque portrait 🙂 It was taken at about 6 feet at 1200mm equivalent field of view with the Canon SX50HS. ISO 500 @ 1/1000th @ f6.5. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Like I say, I have a hundred images so without doubt you will be seeing more of the Gatorland take!
Great Blue Heron in the Shade!
Steve Creek, a fellow nature and wildlife photographer from Arkansas, is running a series of posts on his blog (Steve Creek Outdoors) about why the Great Blue Heron is his favorite bird to photograph. He is up to part 4 today! I am enjoying the posts, since basically, I have the same relationship with Great Blues. 
This Great Blue is at Merritt Island National Wildlife Drive, and seems to have inhabited the pond by the rest stop on Blackpoint Wildlife Drive this year. It was there every time I stopped by over the course of the week I was in Florida. I like this view, both because of its unusual closeness, and because of the effect of the dappled light under the mangrove. The ripples in the water, providing an attractive ground for the image are just a bonus. And yes, he does appear to be eating a seed of some sort? And finally, check out those breeding plumes on the back of this bird’s head!
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill (which just managed to hold detail in both highlight and shadow in this challenging light). –1/3EV exposure compensation. 924mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 640.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.