Both of the following images should be viewed large. The Egrets are secondary subjects here.
In each shot you can find white dots, everywhere. They are Mosquitoes. Shooting against a dark background the number of insects in a swamp are easily seen.
I currently have 3 cans of bug spray in my car. This is why.
Just about every element a southern swamp may have.
The next article in this series is the Great Egret.
Here only a single chick, usually there are a minimum of two.
I selected this one because I thought the light played nicely.
Shooting wildlife you always deal with light, wind, etc. However, this time it was smoke.
The soft background over the swamp water was heavy smoke.
Apparently there was a fire out in the marsh that blew right over the swamp here. That’s not uncommon out in the far marshes we visit, but here it’s unusual.
The wind changed and it was gone in a short while.
It did give a nice soft background though.
I don’t get many opportunities to photograph these birds. They seem to prefer the woods along the edges of a swamp. I don’t venture into a forest often, so minimal chances.
This day several Red-headed gave me a chance.
The first being this one calmly climbing around a large dead snag.
Next (as Ellen describes it) another Woodpecker tortured me.
He was loud, on a dead tree based on the sound, banging away non-stop.
I found the logical tree, worked around as best I could, no Woodpecker. However I could almost see where he was digging.
Next I spotted bright red.
How this bird could be inside and still hammer away is beyond me. Obviously he did it though.
I now know just hearing one is not enough…it’s look inside the trees too.
Oh yeah, all the trees like this have small holes from previous encounters. Finding a hole is easy.
I wanted to direct the focus of the photograph to the Owl’s eye. A catch light made the dark eye give life to the subject.
I choose a light monochrome finish, again to highlight his dark eye.
If all this is too nerdy (which it probably is)… I thought it looked cool.
Barred Owl hunting in a swamp, Charleston, South Carolina.
This rookery has an island that smaller wading birds nest in a few months after the big guys start.
Above a Snowy dropped out of the brush and moved low over the water.
Not the ideal height for around here but they seem to do just fine.
This nest was empty a few minutes before this. I watched him fly in and ruffle up a bit.
It turns out he is the ‘baby’.
Not yet hunting very well on his own he comes back to this to get fed. They drop off food, but not often enough and slowly he figures it out.
