Roseate Spoonbill: Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Titusville, Florida, January 2024 — After enough time trying for water-dancing Snowy Egrets, I turned my attention to the few Roseate Spoonbills who were in the same pool behind the entrance sign at Blackpoint. Always a great bird, in January the Spoonbills at Merritt Island are just coming into breeding plumage. This male was busy doing its spoony thing, harvesting shrimp much more efficiently than the Snowy Egrets, but without the spectacular show. OM System OM-1 with M. Zuiko 100-400IS zoom at 400mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom bird modifications. Processed in Photomator and assembled in FrameMagic.

Bonaparte’s Gull: Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Titusville, Florida, USA, January 2024 — The Bonaparte’s Gulls that feed with the Egrets on those days when the shrimp hatch do not do the whole “dancing on the water” thing, but the Egrets dancing keeps them stirred up and active. They never get to sit still for long. OM System OM-1 with M. Zuiko 100-400IS zoom at 300mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds-in-flight and action modifications. Processed in Photomator and assembled in FrameMagic.

Snowy Egret: Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Titusville, Florida, USA, January 2024 — More Egrets dancing on the water (I told you I got lots of shots!). The grace and beauty of these birds is undeniable. Who can resist? OM System OM-1 with M. Zuiko 100-400IS zoom at 300mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds-in-flight and action modifications. -1.0EV. Processed in Photomator.

Snowy Egrets: Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Titusville, Florida, January 2024 — While I have, as I mentioned when I first posted images from this encounter with the water dancing Egrets along Blackpoint drive, seen this behavior before many times, I never saw it so concentrated or so intense or involving so many birds at once as I did this January. The action was non-stop and I often did not know where to look, there were so many Egrets in the air at the same time. Close calls and cut-offs were inevitable. OM System OM-1 with M. Zuiko 100-400IS zoom at 300mm equivalent. Program mode with my birds-in-flight and action modifications. -1.0EV. Processed in Photomator.

Snowy Egret: Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Titusville, Florida, USA, January 2024 — After my workshop day in Cocoa Beach at the Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival, I arrived early at Blackpoint Wildlife Drive, to find the Egrets and Spoonbills feeding avidly in the ponds right behind the entrance sign. Parking is awkward there, but in just 20 minutes I got more photos of Egrets dancing on the water than I had ever hoped to get. Part of it was the OM System OM-1 with its bird detecting, eye-tracking auto focus, and part of it was that I have never seen so much concentrated action in such a small pool. This sequence shows how effective the whole dance-on-the-water thing is for Snowy Egrets…though I still suspect they have more misses than hits. It is certainly fascinating to watch, and I have enough photos from this one stop to share for the next week or more. 🙂 OM System OM-1 with M. Zuiko 100-400IS zoom at 300mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds-in-flight and action modifications. -1.0EV, 1/1600th second. Processed in Photomator.