This year the Roseate Spoonbills at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge were simply not as cooperative as in past years when I visited in January. I saw a couple flyovers, and found one group feeding…but they were only a few, and they were way in the back of a pond on the second half of the loop. Of course maybe it was just my timing, but I did manage to get out both early and late.

And I did have my digiscoping rig with me, so I was able to get decent shots even with the birds at a distance. This was taken with the Sony Rx100 behind the 15-56x Vario Eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. Using both the zoom on the camera and the zoom on the spotting scope resulted in about a 3000mm equivalent field of view. That is a lot of reach. 1/100th @ ISO 125. Program mode. f18 effective (f5.6 on the camera).

Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.