Posts in Category: Merritt Island NWR
Skimmer!
Last year when I visited the Space Coast Birding Festival there were hundreds of Black Skimmers on the oyster bars at the fishing access on the Merritt Island side of the new bridge. This year there were none. I suspect the oyster bars were somehow scrubbed during the year. I had despaired of trying the Canon SX50HS’ new Sports Mode, which I have found effective on birds in flight, on Skimmers, at least on this trip. But then, on my last visit to the Refuge, after packing the booth up on Sunday, there was a single Black Skimmer fishing in the largest of the ponds on Blackpoint Drive in the late afternoon light. It was circling a largish Mangrove island, round and round, and I had my chance.
Skimmers are BIG. I had only ever really seen them at a distance, and against the backdrop of the open ocean or a large bay. In the pond at Blackpoint, with other birds and close-by vegetation for comparison, it was suddenly clear just how big a Skimmer is. And, of course, Skimmers are fast and agile. That I had known already, which is why I knew they would test the limits of the SX50HS. This particular Skimmer, however, made it much easier because of its regular pattern. It made is circuit of the island at least a hundred times while I watched, and I could pretty well predict when and where it was going to skim. I could also pick the bird up early, get a focus lock, and pan with it before committing to a burst of exposures. Once the shutter was down though, I was panning so fast that even the glimpses I get with the SX50HS between exposures were not enough to guarantee I could keep the bird in the frame. So I shot a lot of frames! I also backed off from full zoom (to about 1000mm equivalent) to give myself a better chance of keeping the bird in the frame.
This sequence shows what happens when a Skimmer hits something that is not a fish…or hits a fish that is too large…I am not sure which. It shows behavior which I had not seen while watching skimmers in flight, probably because the bird recovers really fast. The camera caught it in several different sequences.
Following the bird and attempting to catch it in action was a lot of fun, but I was not really sure I was getting anything I would want to keep until I got back to the hotel and looked at the images in Lightroom. Not bad!
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. 1024mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 640. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Woodie!
On Sunday morning I was at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge for sunrise. I stopped at the 2nd numbered pull-out on Blackpoint Wildlife Drive for pics of the sunrise itself. There were two birds there…a Great Egret and a Tricolored Heron, both of which apparently frequent the small pools below the pull-out this year as I have seen both there on just about every trip around Black Point Drive. This time however, in the space of 20 minutes as I watched the sunrise, well over a hundred birds flew in to share those small pools. Most were White Ibis, but there were also many Snowy Egrets, a few more Great Egrets, a few more Tricolored Herons, and one Wood Stork.
I had lots of fun playing with the dawn light and the various birds as they feed in the pools below me. This is about as “handsome” a shot of a Wood Stork as you are going to find. The soft golden light of the dawn brings out all the character of the bird. Though Woodie in this image looks nicely posed and sedate…it was actually feeding rapidly and moving all the time. I had to catch it in this pose.
Canon SX50HS. 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.
Peacock and Skipper
The title is accurate, even if it sounds like a another crime show featuring partners with a complicated relationship. Fiery Skipper, one of the most common of the skipper butterflies, and White Peacock, certainly very common in January in Florida. Of course you don’t often see them posed like this in the same frame. 🙂 This is along one of the dyke roads at Viera Wetlands (Rich Grissom Memorial Wetlands) in Viera Florida.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1800mm equivalent field of view (1200mm optical plus 1.5x Digital Tel-converter.) f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 250. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
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.
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.)
3/12/2012: Hop, skip and jump. Snowy Egret’s, Merritt Island NWR
Late one afternoon at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, I found a pair of Snowy Egrets (well, maybe just two Snowys, I am not sure of their sexes) “hop and plunge” fishing. That is my term for it. From a standing stop, with a single flap of the wings, they were leaping into the air, somewhat horizontally, for several body lengths, and then plunging down on something in the water. I have seen a lot of different Egret and Heron feeding behavior but I had never seen anything quite like this. It was not, by the way, noticeably effective, as I never saw either Snowy catch anything, but it did look like fun.
Canon SX40HS at 840mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
2/27/2012: Reddish on the Hunt. Merritt Island NWR
There is nothing in this world quite like a Reddish Egret hunting. There is a certain crazed intensity…an apparent randomness…it is almost like watching a demonstration of Brownian Motion, but with only one visible molecule. And the shapes the egret gets itself into…quite astonishing. But always the overriding impression is one of intensity!
Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) and 2) 1240mm equivalent (840mm optical plus 1.5x digital tel-converter function), f5.8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. 3) 1240mm equivalent, f5.8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 200. 4) 1640mm equivalent (2x digital tel-converter function), f5.8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 200.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And here is the video.
2/25/2012: Head Shots, Great Egret
I am late posting today because difficult connections and delayed flights got me into Portland airport at mid-night and home at 1 AM this morning. I slept in. 🙂
A few days ago I ran a series of Great Blue Heron head shots. Today’s offering is another head shot series, this time of Great Egrets. Egrets and Herons, of course, are closely related, and display the same photogenic tendencies. They pose a lot in the course of their normal activities, and, at places like Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and Viera Wetlans in Florida, they allow relatively close approach.
The first two shots are, clearly, of the same bird at Viera Wetlans. The bird was on the bank of the dyke and I pulled up next to it and shot it at 840mm equivalent out the window of the car. I love the delicacy of the back-lighted bird. The next shot is at Merritt Island and the bird was a little further away. This took the 1.5x digital tel-extender function on the Canon SX40HS for 1240mm equivalent. The final shot, again at Merritt, was even further away, and I used the Canon SD100HS behind the eyepiece of my ZEISS DiaScope for a 1600mm equivalent. The last two are cropped for composition.
All shots in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) and 2) f5.8 @ 1/640th @ ISO 100/125. 3) f5.8 @ 1/640th @ ISO 200. 4) 1/500th @ ISO 160. f4.3 effective.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
2/23/2012: Head Shots. (Great Blue Heron)
Steve Creek is doing a series of posts over at Steve Creek Outdoors on why the Great Blue Heron is his favorite bird to photograph. I can identify with the sentiment! Great Blues are certainly photogenic, and, since they are relatively abundant, we generally end up taking a lot of pictures of them. Who could resist?
This series of head shots is from Viera Wetlands (1) and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. I took a lot more GBH shots that this but the GBH head shot is a genre unto itself. For one thing, it is a big head, and you can get relatively close to the birds, so it is easy to fill the frame. For another, that look of alert tension is unique to herons and egrets, and the GBH sets the standard. Finally there is interest in the play of textures and colors, from bold beak to the fine features of the cheeks and neck…and the yellow eye is always riveting.
1) Canon SX40HS at 1240mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical plus 1.5x digital tel-extender function). f5.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. 2) Same camera and zoom, f5.8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. 3) Canon SD100HS behind the 30x eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for the equivalent of 2565mm. 1/500th @ ISO 200. f6.9 effective.
In all cases, Program with iContrast and –!/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.