Posts in Category: Florida
Aerial Dance! Happy Sunday!
When I was at Viera Wetlands on Martin Luther King Day this past week, there were thousands of Tree Swallows. The longer the day went on, the more there were. Just after noon, they clouded the sky when they gathered. I think they were maybe just arriving from points north as there was a lot of jockeying around any likely nest hole (and there are a lot of potential nest holes at Viera). I put the SX50HS in Sports Mode and shot many sequences of the action around the various palm and pine snags. I can not really say for sure what I was seeing…territorial conflict?…early stages of courtship?…only that whatever it was it was beautiful. There is almost nothing so agile or so graceful as a swallow in flight. If it is not the visual inspiration for ballet, then it ought to be.
These images are cropped slightly from full frame, as I zoomed back to 500mm equivalent field of view to follow the action, and the snags were well out in the ponds, but the quality holds up well. SX50HS. Sports Mode. f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 250. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought. I can never figure out how any human being can be unmoved by nature. I find it hard to believe that anyone who is remotely clinging to any kind of spiritual life could look at swallows swarming around a snag in their aerial dance, and not feel the stirrings of wonder. I can not believe they are not lifted at least a little out of themselves and set free in some corner of their souls to soar with the swallows. I can not believe that the intensity of those little lives in such close and intricate interaction…so fiercely independent and yet so coordinated, so synchronized, so responsive to each other that their flight looks to us to have been choreographed…does not awaken awe in any human being.
Happy Sunday!
Common Yellowthroat: peek a boo.
This Common Yellowthroat was teasing me all along the WildBirdsUnlimited trail at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge yesterday am. I made an executive decision to forego a sit-down breakfast, and get out for some birdwatching and photography in the few precious hours of daylight I had before the exhibit area opened and duty called at the Space Coast Birding Festival. I was on the refuge when the sun rose, and got in one loop around Black Point Wildlife Drive before I had to head for my booth. It was glorious and changed the nature of the whole day!
My primary purpose was to get more digiscoped shots with the new Sony camera and the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL, but when the Yellowthroat hopped up and hopped along the trail deep in the mangrove bushes, I resorted to the much quicker Canon SX50HS. With a bird this active, and one moving rapidly enough so that you have to follow down the dyke, there is little hope of catching it in the scope field and getting focused before it is gone. As it was, I only got a few good shots with the SX50. I really like this one. It catches the personality (aviality?) of the CYTh about as well as any photograph I have seen. It is not a field guide illustration, but it has the merit of being much more like what you actually see in the field than any “field marks” illustration I have ever seen. 🙂
Canon SX50HS in 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.
Peace is a Great Egret
For some reason I find this image immensely restful…peaceful…calming. It is an almost classic composition for one thing, and the great white bird above the silver-blue water…the solid sculpted mass of the fallen palms, and the strong verticals and diagonals of the standing trunks…it all just seems to hang in balance. My eye caresses it.
Or maybe it is just me. 
Taken at Viera Wetlands in Viera Florida.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent filed of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 320. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Green Heron in Green Reeds
Another shot from Viera Wetlands, and another shot digiscoped with the Sony Rx100 behind the eyepiece of the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. Here clearly, I turned off auto-focus on the Sony, and focused manually using the LCD screen. I found that there was menu setting to brighten the screen for sunlight viewing, and it works well. This kind of selective focus is quite easy to achieve using the very fine focus control on the DiaScope.
And I really like the effect. The sharply defended, and beautifully plumaged, Green Heron behind its screen of out of focus bright green reeds (with the two contrasting brown at odd angles). You might call it making art of necessity…but I like it.
Sony Rx100 in Program mode. Manual Focus. 1750mm equivalent field of view. 1/200th @ ISO 125. f10 effective. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
River Otter in a Scrape: Viera Wetlands
You just never know. This young River Otter had made a scrape half way between the water and the top of the dyke and was enjoying a good dust bath when a group of birders found it. It was hard to miss. It was about 10 feet from the road along the top of the dyke at Viera Wetlands where, this week of the Space Coast Birding Festival, thousands of birders a day (not to mention the regular lighter traffic of birders, walkers, bikers, and joggers) will pass. And it was not at all alarmed at the attention. By the time I had taken, oh, maybe, a hundred exposures and several minutes of video and moved on, there were at least 15-20 other photographers surrounding the scrape at more or less respectful distances. Some were a lot closer to my bath than I would have tolerated a human, if I were an Otter…or so it seemed to me.
Of course, with the 1200mm reach of the Canon SX50HS, I had the luxury of framing from just about whatever distance I chose to keep.
Wonderful as this encounter was, and thankful as I am to have been there, the number of people involved made it feel a bit too zooish. It was not, of course, at all. Wild otter in the wild doing its thing…but I would much rather have encountered it when I was alone, up some rocky tributary stream, or even out on the backside of Viera. Picky. That’s me.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. -1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 500 and 640. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Hoodie: Viera Wetlands FL
I spent the morning of Martin Luther King Day at Viera Wetlands in Viera Florida, one of my very most favorite places to photograph wildlife. Though the weather could have been better, Viera certainly did not disappoint. I came back with about 1200 exposures, which processed down to around 300 keepers…shooting both with the Canon SX50HS and with the Sony Rx100 behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. I have a new adapter about ready to come to market that I am doing final testing on, and it worked very well.
This is also my very most favorite duck of all time…the Hooded Merganser. Such attitude! And it is always a challenge to photograph because of the extreme high contrast. This is the Sony Rx100 digiscoped…and it did pretty well. I love the feather detail provided by the all ZEISS optics and the Sony’s 1 inch sensor.
Program. Equivalent field of view: 2000mm. 1/500th @ ISO 125. f11 effective. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Winter Avocet: Merritt Island NWR
I could, of course, not resist getting out at least a few hours yesterday. I don’t think my cold is an worse for it, and I know I am considerably better! My plan was just to go to the Blue Heron Wetlands right behind my hotel, but when I got to gate I found it locked for Sunday. Ah. So I drove to Titusville proper and out to Merritt Island NWR’s Black Point Wildlife Drive. Blackpoint can be more or less productive, depending on the year and the day and the hour, but it is certainly the most accessible of the viewing and photo opportunities at Merritt Island. As I tell the locals when they complain, a bad day at Blackpoint is a better than a good day almost anywhere else.
This is a winter plumaged American Avocet. As you can see, by the time I got to Blackpoint the light was not at its best. I am learning to use a new camera and a new adapter for digiscoping with my ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. I have a prototype of the adapter ZEISS will bring to market in a month or so, and the newish Sony Rx100. The Rx100 is a hopped up Point and Shoot, with a 1 inch 18mp sensor for better image quality, full manual control and RAW, and a ZEISS Sonnar 1-3.6x zoom lens…it is the first Sony to have a Sonnar in many years, and it is a great lens for work behind the eyepiece of the spotting scope.
Sony Rx100 behind the 15-56x Vario on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for an equivalent field of view of 1360mm. Program with –1/3 EV exposure compensation. 1/400th @ ISO 125. f7.8 effective.
Back at Space Coast: Happy Sunday!
There is no where for bird photography quite like Florida in January. The light is spectacular. The birds are mostly cooperative. It is just so much easier than anywhere else in the nation…if you are satisfied with the FL specialties. Herons and Egrets and Spoonbills and Hawks…dabbling ducks…Blue Jays, etc.
This is an image from last year, just to set the tone. I only got to FL late last night and went straight to bed trying to shake a nasty Vegas flu/cold. I may get out today, and I may have to let my body heal. We will see how strong the draw of birds becomes as the day goes on…and how I feel.
DigiScoped with the Canon SD100HS behind the 30x eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. 1/500th @ ISO 200. Equivalent field of view: 2140mm. f5.8 effective.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday Thought: I forget, to often, how blessed I am to have a job that gives me the opportunity to do what I enjoy doing…being out in nature…capturing nature with a camera. Other people have to play for, sometimes years, to get to the Space Coast Birding Festival. I am there every year as matter of course. That is pretty special.And I am not going to let any Vegas Flu diminish my thankfulness! Spoonbills are waiting, and even if I stay abed today, I know they are there, just outside the door. That’s enough.
(And, checking the weather, the forecast has shifted. Mostly cloudy with a chance of rain all day today, and partially sunny tomorrow! God is good.)
6/6/2012: Roseate Spoonbills, St. Augustine FL
The Roseates are coming into breeding plumage when I visit Florida in late January, but they are nesting when I visit in May. If that whole time is courtship…well, hard to imagine. Some birds at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm rookery are building nests, some are sitting on eggs, and some have well grown fledglings in the nest. The fledglings are interesting looking (which is what you say when no word adequately describes).
The richness of the pinks of the full adult breeding plumage is also hard to describe.
I always try for flight shots at the rookery, as there are pretty much birds in the air all the time. On occasion it all comes together. And how better than on a Roseate Spoonbill?
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. At the Alligator Farm you work within the optical range of the zoom, as you don’t need anything longer. The bird on the nest and the nestlings were at 840mm, all the rest were at shorter range, down to about 250mm for the top shot.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
6/5/2012: Black-crowned Night-Herons: Jacksonville FL
The rookery at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm is certainly the largest in the area, but it is not the only one. There is a fair sized rookery of, mostly, Wood Storks, on the grounds of the Jacksonville Zoo. The other nesting bird there in small numbers is the Black-crowned Night-Heron, which, oddly enough, I have never seen at the Alligator Farm. The BCNHs like to sit on a post just off the main viewing platform for the African Savannah section of the zoo, across from the trees the Storks are using to nest, quite close to the boardwalk.
These two shots are at 840mm equivalent on the Canon SX40HS. Gotta love those eyes!
I also took a few shots of them hunting for insects under the rookery trees. These were also at the long end of the optical zoom. In the first shot, where the bird is focused on the ground, you can just see the long breeding plume running back up over the bird’s shoulder.
Though the images came out well, it was darker under the trees than it looks…ISO was pushed up to 400 for these shots and I am pleased with the results.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.