photoartflightGreat Egrets In Florida Trees
Posted on November 7, 2021
Now that I am fully retired I am going through files from previous Photo Trips to post. The images here were taken at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Rookery a few years ago. The Featured Image was taken with a Tamron 150-600mm @ 309mm on a Canon R. The Tamron 150-600mm lens worked Great at the Rookery since birds were both near and far in the Rookery giving you a lot of opportunities to get interesting images without carrying a lot of Gear! There were quite a few nests there also since the alligators below the boardwalks helped protect the nests from predators climbing up to raid the nest here!
Great Egrets With Breeding Plumage
Posted on December 6, 2020
When we were photographing last year at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Rookery we saw a lot of Great Egrets with their Breeding Plumage. Great Egrets are of breeding age when they about two years old. As they get into breeding plumage, they have long lacy and delicate plumes on their backs. The eye lores (featherless skin between the bill and eyes) turn from yellow to lime green, and the top of the upper bill turns dark. Also sometimes it seems their neck and other areas look “more feathery”. Below are a few examples of their Breeding Plumage.
Great Egret Landing
Posted on June 20, 2020
A Great Egret landing in the early morning light at a small local lake. Image taken with 400mm DO lens with 1.4X teleconverter.
Great Egret, Breeding Plumage On Nest
Posted on May 25, 2019
Another Great Egret with Breeding Plumage & Coloring on a Nest at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm. I was using a Canon R for most of my trip and am quite impressed with the fine details and how it holds detail in the bright white of my photo subjects in bright sunlight. Most of my images on these types of birds was with no minus exposure compensation. On older Canon bodies I would probably be -1 full stop of exposure compensation to not blow out the details in the whites.
Different nearby nest with chicks
Nearby Great Egret, breeding plumage and eye lore coloring
Young Great Egrets
Posted on May 4, 2019
The featured image shows a little older set of young Great Egrets. They were just hanging out at the nest waiting for food for when their parents return. Below are a few other Great Egret nests with younger birds showing their “fuzzy” look. The images were shot at 550mm and 600mm.
More Great Egret Nests
Posted on April 30, 2019
Among the wide variety of nesting birds at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm’s Rookery, there are many Great Egret nests in the trees. This blog post shows a few of these. It is amazing to see so many nests in most of the trees. Some trees have a dozen or more nests in a single tree. Also the variety of birds nesting in the same tree.
Great Egrets Preening At Blackwater NWR
Posted on November 19, 2018
I finally got a chance to go through images I shot at Blackwater NWR a couple of months ago. Here are two Egrets preening in a tree along the Wildlife Drive. The featured image is a 3 image blend, shot with a 400mm lens with a 1.4x teleconverter. I purposely shot the top and the bottom image a little softer so the main center area stood out more when I blended the images in Photoshop.
After I photographed the featured image series another Egret flew by behind the two in the tree, giving me an opportunity to photograph something flying! We then mostly concentrated on Landscape Panoramas and dragonflies the rest of the day. The cloud formations were spectacular so it was still a wonderful day to photograph at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge!
Great Egrets Roosting In Trees
Posted on September 2, 2018
Along the Wildlife Drive in the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, there is a group of trees at one of the bends in the drive that seems to attract a variety of Herons along with Egrets. You can usually see Black-Crowned Night-Herons, Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, and occasionally Yellow-crowned Night-Herons & Cattle Egrets. This series are with the Great Egrets.
Great Egrets Through The Bushes
Posted on February 2, 2018
I was photographing some small shorebirds when I noticed this group of Great Egrets foraging along the shoreline, coming towards me. I changed my position to get more working distance to photograph them with the lens I had on. Backing up even more as they got closer to get them all in and I shot a series of images through an opening in the bushes. This is the one I liked the best because they were lined up fairly well in the opening in the bushes. And I liked the upraised wings of the Egret in the foreground. I was using a 400mm with a 1.4x teleconverter @ f/8 which softened the bushes I was shooting through. It actually worked out better than I thought.
Up In The Trees
Posted on July 8, 2017
We have been to the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge a few times, but on this visit it seemed a lot of the Egrets and Herons were in some of the tall trees around the water. Not too many were in the water. Seemed strange too see so many Egrets on top of these, but seemed like they had good balance!
An Osprey seemed to join in but not in a tree
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