Five white Ibises and a Glossy coming in to land just after dawn at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. I had to look up the plural of Ibis. Turns out that in the vernacular the members of group of individual Ibis are Ibises. The group that includes all Ibises is, however, more properly Ibides or Ibide. Such is the mess that is our Latinized Anglo Saxon French hodgepodge of a language.   White Ibises are common on the Refuge in January, but, until I looked closely at this image, I would have told you I had not seen a Glossy on this trip.

This is an example of how fast and flexible the Canon SX50HS is. I was taking sunrise pics of the waders in a small channel at Stop 2 on Blackpoint Wildlife Drive when I saw a group of birds coming in. I spun the control dial to Sports Mode, backed off on the zoom for framing, got focus on them, and got off a burst of shots as they passed close. Not bad! You can see the far out-of-focus shadows of a foreground palm they were about to fly behind on the left side of the frame.

Canon SX50HS as above. 655mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 500. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Cropped slightly on the right to eliminate random bird wings.