March
8
Sunday
2334
photos
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Though
the Venice Rookery wasn’t quite as good as I had been expecting, I
decided to put in another day here. My cold was still very bad,
and the good thing about Venice is that you can sit on the banks of the
pond with your big lens in your lap and shoot passing birds at your
leisure. That’s what I did today.
The number of Palm Warblers seemed to increase today, with more of them
having at least some of the reddish cap, though none seemed to be in
quite full breeding plumage:
Palm Warbler at
the Venice Rookery.
400mm at f/5. 1/640 sec at ISO 200.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).
Both of these Palm Warbler photos (above and below) relied heavily on
flash. In the
second photo especially, you can see that the flash has brought
out many subtle colors in the bird’s underside, and also that it has
increased the amount of apparent detail in the white regions:
Palm Warbler at
the Venice Rookery.
400mm at f/5.6. 1/500 sec at ISO 400.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).
Since I have access to great blue herons back home, and because I’d
already shot so many egrets and ibises on this trip, I decided to use
Venice as a chance to get more anhinga photos. Just like on the
Anhinga Trail in the Everglades, the anhingas nest out on the island
and tend to stay in front of distracting vegetation. One bird
inexplicably flew over to the watching crowd by the picnic area and
perched in a tree there, where I was able to shoot it with some very
nice color in the background, though I again relied heavily on flash
since the bird was totally shaded from the sun:
Anhinga at the
Venice Rookery.
400mm at f/4. 1/500 sec at ISO 400.
Flash on high-speed sync at -1.
Flight shots of the anhingas were difficult to get, because the bird is
fairly small (much smaller than a great egret), so that getting them in
the "landing-gear out" position required shooting them from a distance,
and limited detail. Also, their plumage has both very dark areas
and very bright areas, making exposure difficult:
Anhinga Landing
at Venice Rookery.
840mm at f/9. 1/640 sec at ISO 200.
No flash.
Anhinga chicks are just adorable, though again, it was difficult to get
them without lots of distracting vegetation in the background.
Another problem I had with the chicks was that very often the chick
would be partly in the shade and partly in the sun, making proper
exposure difficult (since they have a very bright plumage). As
you can see below, the chicks do have quite a bit of subtle plumage
coloration as well:
Anhinga Chick at
the Venice Rookery.
1200mm at f/13. 1/200 sec at ISO 250.
Fill flash at full power (+3).
Note that the above photo was taken at 1200mm (600mm lens + 2x
teleconverter), but ended up being reasonably sharp despite the slow
shutter speed (1/200 sec), due to the lens’
Image Stabilization feature.
My favorite pose for anhingas is the "snake bird" pose, in which the
bird is emerging from the water with just the head and neck
visible. I had great difficulty getting this pose at the Anhinga
Trail (mostly due to my ineptitude) and again at Corkscrew (mostly due
to the bird’s quickness). Though I got a reasonably good image at
Shark Valley, I was delighted to get another one here, though I wasn’t
able to crop the image at all, due to a bit
of motion blur that’s just barely hidden at full frame:
Anhinga at the
Venice Rookery.
840mm at f/9. 1/640 sec at ISO 200.
No flash.
The other bird that I focused on at Venice was the Common
Gallinule. It was just about the only bird that I saw actually in
the water at Venice, which is a shame, since the background colors in
the water were so delicious:
Common Gallinule
Carrying a Leaf.
600mm at f/7.1. 1/200 sec at ISO 800.
Fill flash at -2/3.
Here’s the adult bringing some insect back from the island to the
chicks that were hidden away in the thick reeds at the edge of the pond:
Common Gallinule
with Insect.
600mm at f/8. 1/320 sec at ISO 800.
Fill flash at full power (+3).
For the shot below I had to crop quite a bit more, since the bird was
much further away, very close to the near edge of the island.
Surprisingly, the image retained enough detail for this aggressive
cropping (despite my camera having only 10 Megapixels). This shot
also depended crucially on flash, since the
black bird was shaded from the sunlight:
Common Gallinule
at Venice Rookery.
600mm at f/7.1. 1/320 sec at ISO 800.
Flash as main light at full power (+3).
Even at close range, I found it enormously difficult to get a proper
exposure of the adult gallinules that showed minute feather detail in
the black regions without blowing the highlights in the white (along
the bird’s side) or in the beak. The red and yellow of the beak
were very difficult to capture faithfully.
Common Gallinule
at the Venice Rookery.
840mm at f/9. 1/400 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).
Today the herons were again busily bringing in nesting materials:
Great Blue Heron
at the Venice Rookery.
600mm at f/7.1. 1/320 sec at ISO 800.
Fill flash at full power (+3).
As you can see below, this proceeded into the late afternoon, when the
westering sun began to produce some warmer colors than in the image
just above:
Great Blue Heron
at Venice Rookery.
840mm at f/7.1. 1/1600 sec at ISO 640.
No flash.
In capturing the hand-off of the stick between mates, I should have
been using a larger focal length than 600mm (ideally 840mm, or even
1200mm), but I had been trying to get flight shots at the smaller focal
length and didn’t have time to put on a teleconverter every time the
male showed up with another stick. Fortunately, I was able to
crop the image below quite aggressively without too terribly degrading
image quality; though there’s some motion blur and slight sharpening
artifacts, you can clearly see the edge of the nictitating membrane on the male’s
eye (at left) which he is blinking to protect his cornea during the
hand-off; the female (at right) is also blinking hers, and though the
edge isn’t visible, you can clearly see the blue haze over her eye
imparted by the membrane:
Great Blue Herons
at Venice Rookery.
600mm at f/7.1. 1/320 sec at ISO 800.
No flash.
Most entertaining of all were the bouts of feeding by the herons.
As I explained in yesterday’s entry, the chicks stimulate the
regurgitation instinct in the adults by firmly grabbing the adult’s
beak in its own beak and pulling downward on it. As you can see
in the image below, it doesn’t look at all like a pleasant experience
for the adult. On a more technical note, this image was taken at
1200mm (600mm f/4 lens + 2x
teleconverter), which is fairly
remarkable, given the amount of detail apparent in the image
(notwithstanding the motion blur in the adult’s head, which is my
fault, since I used a shutter speed of only 1/320 sec):
Heron Chick
(left) Begging for Food.
1200mm at f/11. 1/320 sec at ISO 250.
No flash.
Once again I took advantage of the night herons flying to and from the
island, with the arrivals being more useful to me than the departures,
since they involved some interesting deceleration maneuvers such as the
one shown below:
Black-crowned
Night Heron at Venice Rookery.
840mm at f/7.1. 1/1600 sec at ISO 640.
No flash.
Though I stayed till after dark, the sunset wasn’t great, and I didn’t
get any useful silhouette images.
Overall, although the Venice Rookery provided some very fine images, I
was again somewhat underwhelmed, given all the praise I’ve heard about
the place (even within the past couple days from photographers who had
just been there). The species diversity was quite low. One
photographer described having gotten some wonderful images here, just
days ago, of an adult Great Egret in full breeding plumage doing its
courtship pose. I didn’t get any images like that here, though as
you’ll see I did end up getting these at Gatorland a few days
later.
I did check out the "celery fields" which a photographer at Corkscrew
had strongly recommended, though it was quite dead when I drove past
around noon (a fire had burned much of the site just a day or two
ago). The other local Venice site that had been
recommended to me was the "dump" (actually a recycling center), but
unfortunately the dump is closed on Sundays and I didn’t get a chance
to check it out yesterday.
I did meet some wonderfully nice people at the Venice Rookery, and I
collected some useful advice from them. First, several people
recommended Gatorland in Orlando for bird photography. Though it
was on my itinerary, I had been thinking of skipping it. I
changed my mind after talking to some of the people here (and, as
you’ll see, it was a good thing that I didn’t skip it after all).
Several people also recommended Viera Wetlands (which I decided I
didn’t have time for), Merritt Island (which I had removed from my
itinerary, but put back on it), and a place called Cruickshank.
Though I ended up not visiting the latter, it’s reputed to be one of
the very best places to shoot Scrub Jays —
the birds are so tame at
this location that they will actually perch on your head (I saw a photo
as proof).
I decided to move on to the next site tomorrow: Fort Desoto
Park, which is supposed to be outstanding
for shorebirds.
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