When you are working with a spotting scope, with a digital camera behind the eyepiece, where you can reach ridiculous equivalent fields of view…1000mm to 5000mm…it is tempting to reach out for those far birds, and occasionally, when the air is just right, you get a reasonable shot. More often, the air between you and the bird, or the heat shimmer and moisture in the air between you and the bird, produce a shot that is not quite satisfying. Astronomers call it “bad air”, and it limits observational astronomy and astro-photography just as it does bird photography. Most of the bird photography you see on the internet and in books and magazines was done at very close range. There is no other way to capture that feather detail. But still…sometimes the light is so fine, and the bird so elegant (or ugly, or cute, or just so full of itself) that you have to try. Sometimes, despite the bad air, it works.

This Great Egret was in an impondment on the Wetlands Trail at East Harbor State Park in Port Clinton OH, just over the first ridge of beach from Lake Erie, in mid-afternoon of a late summer day. The wind was brisk, and through the scope, you could easily see the heat shimmer in the air…so I did not have high hopes. In the first shot it is the lighting, and the posture of the bird that saves the shot. In the second, I really like the delicate reeds in front of the bird.

Then, crossing half the continent to a morning a few days earlier, we have another Great Egret, this time in the marshes of Southern Maine, along the Kennebunk Bridle Path. This image is really about the early morning light on the marsh grasses, already touched with fall, and the way it molds the Egret…folds the Egret…in its golden warmth. The pose helps, beak just parted, and alert, but not yet nervous. Way too much shimmer…bad air…between me and the bird, and little hope of a sharp shot, but still…gotta try, and for me, as an image (in distinction from a bird shot) this works.

All three with the Nikon Coolpix P300 behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. 1) about 2000mm equivalent field of view, 1/1000th @ ISO 160, f5.5 effective. 2) about 3500mm, 1/500th @ ISO 160, f9.6 effective. 3) about 1000mm equivalent, 1/320th @ ISO 160, f3.4 effective. All Programmed Auto, and auto focus.

Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.