Wilson’s Snipe. Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands, Viera FL

Yesterday I spent the day photographing with my friend Paul Sayeh. This was Paul’s first trip to Florida, and I had a lot of fun showing him the birds and other critters at Viera Wetlands and Merritt Island (he likes Alligators and loved Armadillos). At one point I let him out of the car to photograph some White Ibis along the berm at Viera while I did some email and housekeeping in the car. When I finally decided to get out and see what he was up to, as I turned to close the car door, I caught a glimpse of a small bird like thing right at the water’s edge at the foot of the berm, tucked in some weedy growth. “Nah…” I thought, “that can’t be a snipe.” But it was! Snipe are never easy to see, and notoriously difficult to photograph. The most common view is going overhead at about 25 feet and 30 miles per hour. So I was just a little excited to find this one sitting. I got off some shots with the Sony at 1200mm equivalent, and when it still sat there, I got out the digiscoping kit and took several views at slightly higher magnifications.

ZEISS DiaScope 65FL with the Canon SD320HS behind the ZEISS 30x wide-field eyepiece on the Digidapter for ZEISS (made by the afore mentioned Paul Sayeh). Approximately 1300mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.