The largest birds and most conspicuous birds at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm rookery are the Wood Storks. 30 to 40 pair nest each year, many of them in the single largest tree. It looks like Wood Stork village. I was there in late afternoon when the Florida temperatures were nearing 90 degrees and the sun was hot. This Stork is making shade for a nest full of young. I saw this pose at several nests, and is evidently one the Stork can hold for an extended time. The shot also shows off the green iridescence in the black feathers of the wings…something that is sometimes hard to see.

The second shot is of a Stork airing its wings in the tree top, coming or going. There is constant movement as the birds come and go from feeding, and the Storks don’t ever seem to finish nest building. Males are still bringing in green branches when there are already young in the nest.

The young are just as ungainly and ugly as the adults…but where the adults are saved by the sheer majesty of those huge wings, the chicks have to rely on the residual cuteness of the young of any species for their appeal.

To be fair, the adults have a kind of majesty even without the spread wings.

Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.  1) 700mm equivalent field of view, f6.3 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200. 2) 600mm equivalent, f5.8 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. 3) 840mm equivalent, f5.8 @ 1/800th @ ISO 100. 4) 670mm, f5.8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 200. 5) 400mm, f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. 6) 430mm, f5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 100.

Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.