I’m not sure what was so interesting. Whatever it was I took advantage of it.
Posing nicely for a portrait.
Tricolored Heron
Category Archives: Heron
Perched Yellow-crown Night Heron
Taken at the Port Royal rookery, in what is a thick and tangled swamp area. Just what the Yellow-crowns like, and photographers hate.
You spend as much time looking for open holes through the tress as you do finding the birds. Below was shot through one of those small open views.
Specs; OM-1 mk2, OM 100-400 II, Lightroom.
Great Blue Heron, Edge Of The Sunny Water
This is a pretty common shot here with the big Herons.
The trails through this local swamp are tight, wind around the waters edge, and have a few sharp turns. This leads to accidental meetings, up close.
Neither knows what’s going to happen, so both just keep walking. Minimal eye contact is the trick. You can, like here, get a quick shot, just keep going.
No eye contact works more than you would think. It’s for birds and animals, yes even Alligators.
Best viewed large.
Treading Carefully, Little Blue
One of the nice things about being in a place with many birds and activity is you can step back and (try) to pick and choose your shots. These shots are just that.
I was standing on the edge of this swamp area just watching small herons and egrets wandering the brush and fishing the swamp.
This Little Blue didn’t seem to like the clutter. He would take a step, flap around, deep breath, and try again. I grabbed a few shots because these birds should be seasoned hunters, not prima donnas. 🤣
Dramatic Landing, Tricolored Heron
One of those times standing there and waiting paid off.
Tricolored Heron dropping down into the brush.
Black-crowned Night Heron Series
Given I’ve been publishing Yellow-crowns lately thought I would give equal time to their close cousin the Black-crowned Night Heron.
Just about everything you can say about one Night Heron, you can say about the other. Maybe these birds are a little less fond of dark swamps. Both Night Herons chicks look almost identical for the first year or so.
These birds were photographed in a rookery also. They nest on the exact opposite side of the big ponds in the Port Royal rookeries.
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Black-crowned Night Heron
Black-crowned Night Heron
Black-crowned Night Heron
Black-crowned Night Heron
Patience Of A Night Heron
This was quite a long shot, and it’s a dark spot. A little surprising it came out decent. Maybe that’s why the image was in the ‘to do’ and never touched again.
When we hit a good day the number of images can get large, near 1,000 is common. Over time I’ve gotten better at culling the files but there comes a time when I just get to the point where I ‘pick a few’ and move on. That means a look through the folder later, like here in a Yellow-crown rookery, I always find shots that were ignored based on sheer volume of the opportunities.
This was taken from about as far as I would shoot in a dark swamp. The edge of this rookery has a gully where I can usually spot activity like this Night Heron waiting to see any sign of movement in the thick swamp water.
Black And White Yellow-crowned Night Heron
Not something I would normally do in Black and White, they are too colorful. But it’s something different. Besides the ‘side eye’ look he’s giving me worked with it too.
OM-1 mk2, OM 100-400 II, Lightroom, Topaz, DxO Silver Efex.