Tricolor Heron

The tricolor heron is one of the most colorful birds we see here in Florida in the springtime.  Since I've been a little under the weather lately these images are from an earlier outing.

[click on any image for a larger view]

Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge



96987 - Great Blue Heron



I recently made a quick trip to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and have finally gotten around to posting a few photos.  This great blue heron was standing in some grass near a pond and was in pretty good light.   I made quite a few shots but I like the head angle on this one the best.

Below is a full body shot of the same bird.  (Click on any image for a larger view.)

97008 - Great Blue Heron

And finally, one with a fish.




96969 - Great Blue Heron

 

I have never managed to get a really good shot of a belted kingfisher, and as of today I still haven't.  This one below is probably my best effort so far, but it is cropped from a larger image. These birds spook easily and it's very difficult to approach one to get a closer shot.



40-14265 Belted Kingfisher



The last two are a reddish egret and a tricolor heron.  



97137 - Reddish Egret





96848 - Tricolor Heron



Reworking Old Photos




Night Heron in Flight (juvenile) 2005

[Click on any image for a larger view]

 It seems as software gets more and more sophisticated and one's editing skills improve, there is always a desire to go back and re-edit old photos.  On that topic, I often tell my friends that I don't think any of us will live long enought to go back and fix all of the images we'd like to fix.  But accepting that as reality, it's still fun to take some time now and then to dabble a little bit just to see the difference between our editing skills now, versus what they were back whenever.

I have been cleaning up some old computer files this weekend and deleting a lot of old images that I no longer feel are worth holding onto.  But in that process I stumbled across a few photos I couldn't resist taking time to rework.

I've been using Photoshop CS5 since it was released a last year and I believe it is absolutely the best upgrade Adobe has ever released in the CS line of software.  Adobe Camera Raw version 6 (raw image editor) is absolutely amazing compared to even the last version that preceded it.  The improvements in ACR alone make CS5 worth the upgrade price. 

The first image above of a juvenile night heron in flight, is a lucky shot I made back in 2005 with my first ever DSLR, a Canon 10d.  It typically could not focus fast enough to track a moving bird, but I got lucky on this attempt.  This is still one of my favorite shots of all the birds in flight I have photographed since.

Here are a few images I reworked today...




Tricolor Heron in breeding plumage, 2009

 


Red Shoulder Hawk, 2008





Yellow Crowned Night Heron, 2010

  


 


Meadowlark, 2008

 





Wood Stork (nest building), 2009

 





Great Egret with nesting material, 2009

 




Birds In Flight

St. Augustine Alligator Farm

Having just returned last week from a trip around Florida photographing birds, I was still in the mood to do a little more.   So on Tuesday I drove down to the rookery at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm and was a little surprised to see so many birds already nesting in the trees above the swamp.   I had heard there were a good number of birds, but never expected this many so early in the season.  

Needless to say, this made a good opportunity to photograph some birds in flight.  The wind direction was not ideal, but I still got some decent opportunities.   There were tons of great egrets, and also lots of wood storks and snowy egrets. 

I also saw about 20 spoonbills roosting, and occasionally they would fly around.  But usually they did not fly far and would land again close to whee they had been, offering little chance of flight photographs.   I only had one or two chances to photograph the spoonies in flight, and I didn't really get anything too good.   The image above is one of them. [click any image to enlarge]

The next five images are great egrets.  It's fun to photograph these guys as they go out to retrieve sticks and then return to add them to the nest.

Below is one of the few wood storks I photographed that day.  There were lots more great egrets in the sky than anything else. 

 

And finally, it was interesting to see this great egret below attempt to fly with this large a tree branch.  He flew a good distance with the branch, but dropped it just as he got to the nest.

The rookery is really cranking up now and there are lots of birds.  In addition to what I've already mentioned, there were also some tricolor herons and a few cattle egrets, and night herons. 

The newly built boardwalk is much nicer than the old one.  It is far more stable, and it extends a little closer to the back fence.  It does not vibrate when folks walk past pushing baby strollers, as it always did in the past.

I figure I'll be making a few more trips to the rookery as the other species of birds start nesting.