March
7
Saturday
1967
photos
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Last
night I decided to advance my schedule a bit. Reports from other
photographers of their great luck at sites further north had been
leaving me a bit impatient to continue on to the more northerly of the
destinations on my itinerary. Fortunately, I was easily able to
change my hotel reservations last night to accommodate the change in
plans, though with my horrible cold I decided to put off the drive to
Sarasota till this morning.
Around 11am I arrived at the legendary Venice Rookery. Just
pulling into the parking lot at this famous birding destination made my
cold feel 100 times better (or maybe it was the Mucinex-D kicking
in?). The place looked pretty small. The parking lot
doesn’t hold many cars, and the site really just consists of a tiny
pond containing a tiny island and surrounded by a very modest strip of
land. There’s a picnic shelter, but I didn’t see any
restrooms (other than those at the visitor center, which was closed).
The first bird that caught my interest was this Common Gallinule (also
called a Moorhen) —
as you
can see, one good thing about the Venice
Rookery is that you can get very nice colors reflecting in the water:
Common Gallinule
at the Venice Rookery.
600mm at f/8. 1/640 sec at ISO 320.
No flash.
Below is a much closer shot of the adult gallinule —
these birds are
fairly fearless and will readily forage in the reeds at the edge of the
pond while you’re only a few feet away:
Common Gallinule
at Venice Rookery.
400mm at f/9. 1/400 sec at ISO 400.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).
I was lucky enough to catch fleeting glimpses of the gallinule’s chicks
as the adult led them through the dense reeds at the pond’s edge:
Gallinule Chicks.
600mm at f/5.6. 1/1000 sec at ISO 500.
Flash on high-speed sync at +0.
Another bird that I was happy to see was the black-crowned night heron,
since I still didn’t have many photos of this speciees:
Black-crowned
Night Heron.
600mm at f/7.1. 1/800 sec at ISO 320.
No flash.
One thing I don’t like about the Venice
Rookery is that the birds tend to hang out in the bushes on the island,
where the backgrounds tend to be very "busy", with lots of sticks and
vegetation to distract the eye. Just as on the Anhinga Trail, I
tried to work around this by shooting only those birds that perched
atop the vegetation, so that the backgrounds would be out of focus:
Black-crowned
Night Heron.
600mm at f/9. 1/160 sec at ISO 100.
No flash.
One of the
main attractions of the Venice Rookery is the ability to shoot herons
and egrets bringing in nesting materials to the island. I must
have shot several hundred frames of this heron repeatedly coming back
with branches that he then gave to his mate, who would carefully place
them on the growing nest pile before sitting down in the nest cup again:
Great Blue Herons
at Nest.
600mm at f/9. 1/800 sec at ISO 400.
No flash.
Different nests were at different stages. Some were just being
built, as shown above, while others had chicks that were so big they
looked like they were ready to fledge. In the photo below, the
two birds in front are chicks arguing over feeding rights; the third
bird, in the back, is the adult, who has just arrived with fish in its
crop to be regurgitated for the young, once they settle their
differences:
Arguing Great
Blue Heron Chicks.
600mm at f/9. 1/800 sec at ISO 320.
No flash.
The actual regurgitation of food by the adult is apparently stimulated
by an external event: namely, by having a chick pull on the adult’s
beak. In the photo below you can see that one chick is attempting
to grasp the adult’s beak, in an effort to stimulate regurgitation,
while a second chick has latched onto the base of the first chick’s
skull, either mistaking it for the adult’s beak, or as an intentional
agonistic act
(i.e., to assert its dominance of the other bird with
respect to feeding rights):
Heron Chicks
Begging for Food.
600mm at f/9. 1/800 sec at ISO 320.
No flash.
Because the island is used by many
herons and anhingas for nesting, there is a constant stream of birds
coming and going, bringing nesting materials and food for the chicks,
and this provides some opportunity for flight shots, though I found it
difficult to get shots of the birds flying directly toward me (which
were
much more common on Key Largo). Nevertheless, because the birds
are generally coming in for a landing (rather than just flying by),
it’s possible to get them in reasonably nice poses in mid-air:
Great Egret
Coming In for a Landing.
600mm at f/9. 1/800 sec at ISO 320.
No flash.
As I mentioned above, the reflection of color in the water at Venice
can produce very nice backgrounds. The reason for this is that
the pond is not very wide, so as long as you’re not shooting straight
down at the water, there should be some sort of vegetation providing a
reflection, giving you nice greens, browns, or reds:
Cormorant at
Venice Rookery.
600mm at f/5. 1/800 sec at ISO 400.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).
The
other
good thing about Venice is that the sun sets directly behind the
island, so you can get some nice silhouettes at sunset, as long as the
birds are perching atop the highest vegetation on the island.
It’s also possible to get them in flight as they come in to roost (many
hundreds of herons and ibises come in to roost
each night), though I didn’t have as much luck with this, due to the
sunset being so brief and the vegetation both near and far intruding
into my shots. I was, however, happy to see that the two juvenile
great-blue herons were still arguing about something or other as the
sun set, giving me the opportunity to make this silhouette shot:
Great Blue Heron
Chicks, Still Arguing.
600mm at f/4. 1/500 sec at ISO 1250.
No flash.
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