While still in Florida, I posted a series of images from my first encounter with this Bittern. Or at least I assume it is the same Bittern. I found it a second time several hundred yards down the same ditch, same time of day, and in the area where it was consistently reported during the week of the Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival. If it is the same bird, and I suspect it is, there are now almost certainly more images of this American Bittern in existence than of any other of its species, anywhere, ever :). It had the habit all that week of working along the water channel that parallels Black Point Wildlife Drive…the most heavily traveled and birded stretch of road at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge…most of the time in easy view of the road. And hundreds of photographers took thousands of photos of this bird during the week, with everything from the 3x zoom on their Point and Shoot, to 600mm Canon Image Stabilized lenses with 2x extenders, to, as in my case, a Point and Shoot behind the eyepiece of a spotting scope.

On this outing I had the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on my DiaScope, and with this combination and my Canon SD100HS’s native 3.8x zoom, in good air and good light, I can reach ridiculous equivalent focal lengths, for amazing close ups. The top image is at something like 3500mm equivalent, and the next one is at about 5700mm! For comparison, here is the bird at 840mm equivalent taken with the Canon SX40HS from the same spot.

And I can’t resist posting one more in this series (all taken before the bird began to move down the channel). This one is at something like 2200mm equivalent. I think he saw me.

Camera as above. The long shots are at 1/80th @ ISO 100 and 1/100th @ ISO 250. The SX40HS shot is at f5.8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 320. The intermediate shot is at 1/200th @ ISO 100. All in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.

Processed, and cropped where cropped, in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Color balanced by eye to match the series.