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Florida Safari 2009
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Feb 28
Saturday
2837 photos
Today I woke up much earlier (4am) than yesterday, since the drive from Miami International Airport (where my dog-friendly hotel is located) to the Everglades is a long one and I wanted to take advantage of the early morning light.  Noon lighting is typically not ideal for bird photography, because it leaves the underside of the bird unlit.  Many bird photographers prefer early morning and late afternoon, due to the angle of light from the sun, and also because of the richer colors imparted as the sun’s rays pass through a larger quantity of atmosphere.  Unfortunately, I found that a computer glich had prevented my files from the previous day from being copied over to my second backup drive, so I had to spend several hours stuck in my hotel room waiting for the backup to complete.  I always upload my images every night to two external drives, which are mirrors of each other.  One drive I leave in my hotel room and the other I take with me and leave locked up in the trunk.  That way, if either my car or my hotel room is burglarized when I’m out in the field, I’ll still have a copy of all my images.  Cameras and lenses can be replaced (especially if they’re insured), but images are unique.

My destination this morning was Shark Valley, a site within Everglades National Park (off of route 41).  As it turns out, this site doesn’t open till 8:30am, so my computer problems hadn’t cost me any actual shooting time. There were quite a number of photographers there, but only one or two really serious shooters with big lenses; the rest were mostly tourists with sub-300mm lenses.  The site is actually quite small, at least the part that’s reputed to be any good for bird photography.  There’s a channel of water much like a canal that extends from the parking lot beside a wide trail.  The serious bird photographers informed me that it’s pretty futile to go much further than about 100 yards down this trail.

The nice thing about Shark Valley is that if you can see the bird at all, then it’s typically very close.  I had been wanting a shot of an Anhinga sticking just its neck and head out of the water like a snake, and I was finally able to get one here:




Anhinga at Shark Valley, in the Everglades.
Canon EOS 1D Mark III camera with Canon 400mm f/4 DO lens.
1/500 sec at ISO 640, f/9.  Fill flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).


The bad thing about Shark Valley is that the backgrounds are, for the most part, very "busy" and distracting, just as along the Anhinga Trail. The Green-backed Heron image below illustrates this somewhat, though this was one of the least "busy" of the photos I took at Shark Valley:




Green-backed Heron at Shark Valley, in the Everglades.
Canon 600mm f/4 lens, stopped down to f/11. 
1/320 sec at ISO 400.  Flash at +3 on high-speed sync.


Despite the sub-optimal backgrounds, I was glad for the opportunity to shoot Green-backed Herons, since I rarely get close enough to them in North Carolina.  As a bonus, I even got to shoot some Green-backed Heron chicks.  These two fellows (below) were across the narrow channel from where I was standing with the big 600mm lens:




Green Heron Chicks at Shark Valley.
Canon 600mm f/4 lens, stopped down to f/11. 
1/400 sec at ISO 400.  Flash at +3 on high-speed sync.



You can see from the downy feathers on their heads that they’re chicks, though they’ve obviously left the nest and are approaching the size of an adult.  These were the first Green-backed Heron chicks I’d ever seen, so I was happy just to have found them.

By far, the most exciting find for me that morning was the Purple Gallinule pictured below.  I had never seen one before, and wasn’t even aware that they occurred in the Everglades.  The bird is fairly small, probably smaller than a chicken, but with enormous feet (not shown) that it can use to walk on lily pads with ease.  The bird’s plumage is iridescent, with many subtle colors that can only be seen well in bright sunlight (or with flash).  The bird pictured below came out and foraged on the water near the far shore of the channel for only a few minutes before disappearing again in the marshy woods on the far side.  (Later on this trip I’ll see some Common Gallinules, which have a similar, colorful beak, but with a mostly black body).




Purple Gallinule at Shark Valley.
Canon 600mm f/4 lens, stopped down to f/11. 
1/250 sec at ISO 400.  Flash at +3 on high-speed sync.



For the more serious photographers assembled at Shark Valley that day, the main attraction was a particularly active Tri-colored Heron (see below) that was foraging in the channel.  The bird would perch on a log and intently watch the water’s surface till suddenly it made a rapid foray out over the water in hopes of procuring a fish:




A Very Active Tri-colored Heron at Shark Valley.
Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens at 200mm, f/9.
1/1600 sec at ISO 640.

The bird gave us quite a workout.  Just when all the photographers had settled into a ready position to shoot the bird on its next foray, the bird would move to another location a bit upstream or downstream, forcing us all to hustle to new positions in preparation for the bird’s next move.  In the end, I didn’t really get any useful shots of the bird’s hunting attempts; the problem was the light: though I was able to get shots of the bird poking its head into the water to catch a fish, the sunlight never illuminated enough of the bird to make for a pleasing image.  The use of flash didn’t help either, since I had to use a relatively fast shutter speed to freeze the quick motions of the bird.  Probably the worst problem I had with this bird was due to the sunlight hitting the white underside of the bird.  That bright sunlight reflecting off of white feathers set an upper limit on my exposure values, since I had to ensure that I didn’t blow the highlights in the white regions of the bird’s plumage.  At the same time, the undersides of the wings were typically in shadow and ended up being highly underexposed.  A friendly photographer of German or Austrian origin agreed that properly exposing this bird was very difficult, and would only be rendered manageable by cloud cover.  I was able to produce the above image only by using flash at close range and then turning up the "fill light" slider in Adobe Camera Raw.

Another first for me was the white-phase Little Blue Heron that you can see pictured below
:



Little Blue Heron (White Phase) at Shark Valley.
Canon 600mm f/4 lens, stopped down to f/11. 
1/250 sec at ISO 100.  Flash at +3 on high-speed sync.



The Little Blue Heron goes through a white phase before obtaining the blue-red colors of the adult.  Most of the other North American herons don’t go through such a white phase.  Once again, I found that photographing a bird with a white ventral side in bright sunlight resulted in underexposed shadow areas.  Because the bird was perched across the canal and high up on a tree bough, normal fill flash probably wouldn’t have helped tremendously.  Fortunately, my homemade, 14-inch flash extender ("beamer"), coupled with the fact that I could use slow shutter speeds (since the bird was stationary) allowed me to light up the shadows on this bird quite well, as you can see in the image above.

Although I didn’t see any sharks at Shark Valley, I did see plenty of gators.  Pictured below is one individual who sneaked up on me while I was searching for a submerged anhinga:




Gator at Shark Valley.
Canon 70-200 lens at 200mm, f/8.
f/800 sec at ISO 500.  Fill flash at full power.


I should note that Shark Valley really doesn’t require huge focal lengths, in general.  Of the serious photographers I met there that day, few had anything larger than 400mm.  Because the waterway paralleling the trail is only about 20 feet wide, the birds tend to be very close, so 400mm or even 300mm lenses can be quite useful, and for the large, active birds like the Tri-colored Heron mentioned earlier, a 200mm zoom can be very useful as well.

Around noon I left Shark Valley and headed back toward the east entrance to Everglades National Park, with Eco Pond being my intended destination.  Unfortunately, due to some misleading signs along the way, I ended up on a dead-end dirt road in the middle of nowhere and had to back-track to the nearest highway, wasting a half hour of travel time.  Around 2-ish I finally arrived at the campgrounds near Flamingo, where my dog could cool off in the water while I looked for dolphins.  I did eventually see one, way off in the distance:




Dolphin near Flamingo in Everglades National Park
Canon 600mm f/4 lens stopped to f/8.  1/500 sec at ISO 250.


Around 3-ish I headed to nearby Eco Pond.  Inspection of the Black-necked Stilt images from last night showed that I hadn’t been using fast-enough shutter speeds to freeze the foraging movements of the birds, so I hoped to get some sharper images by using higher shutter speeds at higher ISO settings.  Below are just a few of the thousands of images I took at Eco Pond that afternoon:




Black-necked Stilt at Eco Pond.
Canon 600mm f/4 lens plus 1.4x teleconverter.
840mm at f/8.  1/1250 at ISO 400.  No flash.


When taking so many photos of the same species of bird at the same location, it’s nice if you can somehow vary the angle of the shots from time to time, in order to vary the color or brightness of the backgrounds.  The image above was taken from the area directly in front of my position, which has a brown foreground and a whitish background.  The image below was shot off to my right, where there is more green foliage to reflect off the water:




Black-necked Stilt at Eco Pond.
Canon 600mm f/4 lens plus 1.4x teleconverter.
840mm at f/8.  1/1600 at ISO 400.  No flash.



Until the sun had fallen lower toward the horizon, many of the backgrounds would be largely devoid of color if there was no greenery to reflect off the water.  In the case of the image below, the white sand of the foreground together with the blurred and colorless background ended up almost producing the illusion that I was shooting a misty morning scene:




Black-necked Stilt at Eco Pond.
Canon 600mm f/4 lens plus 1.4x teleconverter.
840mm at f/8.  1/1600 at ISO 400.  No flash.



As sunset approached, the colors once again came out, just like last night (which a bit of saturation in Photoshop helped to bring out
being careful not to bring out too much yellow in the bird’s underside, nor too much red in its legs):



Black-necked Stilt at Eco Pond.
840mm at f/7.1.  1/1000 at ISO 250. 
Fill flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).



My two afternoons at Eco Pond in the Everglades were extremely enjoyable, mostly because I was shooting one of my favorite birds
the Black-necked Stilt.  This was to be my last day at Eco, though, since I was becoming more and more impatient to get to some of the sites further north.  In contrast to my plan of visiting sites in south-to-north order (to coincide with the progression of arrival of spring), most of the other photographers and birders I’ve been meeting have been working their way south, and they’ve mostly reported that sites further north such as the Venice Rookery and Fort DeSoto Park have been excellent in the past week or two.  One exception is Ding Darling NWR on Sanibel Island, which everyone I’ve met has found to be terrible for bird photography, despite its venerable reputation.  I was told not to waste my time driving to Sanibel at all.

Strangely, I didn’t encounter many other photographers at Eco Pond, and of those that I did see there, none of the others were using the approach-low and shoot-at-eye-level technique, which I am finding produces the most satisfying images.  I’m now rarely satisfied to shoot high from a tripod, at least for ground-foraging and water-based birds.  The birds at Eco Pond showed almost no concern about my close proximity, even when I stood up to gather my things and leave.




Sunset at Eco Pond.
Tamron 12-24mm lens at 24mm, f/9.
1/500 sec at ISO 400.








All text and photos (C) Bill Majoros.  All rights reserved.