Great Egret, Gatorland, Orlando FL

If you are into bird photography, Gatorland, near Orlando, in winter and spring is always worth a visit. As a senior citizen I even get in for less than half price. Such a deal. The deal at Gatorland is close ups of “wild” birds…mostly Egrets and Herons that nest around the Breeding Pool…where over 300 Alligators are kept for breeding. There are some BIG Alligators in there! And birds. Wherever you find Alligators in large numbers, birds will build a rookery. They feel relatively safe from most predators with the Alligators patrolling the waters below them. You may have noticed the quotation marks around “wild” in the sentence above. The nesting birds at Gatorland are not, of course, captive…but they are so used to humans and human hand-outs that they can not, in my opinion, be classed as wild either. Gatorland is a place where you can take full frame photos of a Snowy Egret from 2 feet with your phone. I know. I did it. This Great Egret, coming into breeding plumage, was something closer to 4 feet from me, standing on one of the boardwalk rails. This is what the Gatorland experience is all about for the bird photographer. I could not resist the effective back-lighting.

Sony HX400V at 414mm equivalent field of view. In camera HDR. Nominal exposure: 1/200th @ ISO 100 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.