I’ve found that one of the pleasures of bird photography and bird watching in general is the repeated observation of locations over the course of a nesting season.  When you return to a place regularly, you can watch the behavior of the parents over time as well as the young birds as they develop.

I’m fortunate to live relatively close to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Bird Rookery and I was able to visit four times recently.  This was the first year that Roseate Spoonbills have nested there and the farthest north that they’ve been recorded nesting.  In this post, I’ll show you a sequence of photographs made over about six weeks of the two easily seen Spoonbill nests at the Rookery.  Nest 1 is on the right side of the boardwalk closest to the entrance.  Nest 2 is the one you can see from the far end of the boardwalk close to the large tree.

This first photo was taken at the end of May and shows one Spoonbill above and to the right of nest 2.  At the bottom left you can just barely make out  one of the very young and small Spoonbills.  This is the first photo I managed to make of the chicks.  Sorry about the quality.  The chicks didn’t come out in the open at all when I was there that time.

Mother Spoonbill keeps an eye on chick, nest 2.  May 30th, 2010

Here is the same nest (#2) two weeks later.  The chicks have grown quite a bit, have some beginning feathers, and are quite a bit more active.

Roseate Spoonbill Mom and chicks in nest 2, June 13th, 2010

And this photo shows how large the chicks had grown yesterday when I visited  – quite a difference in only 16 days!

Roseate Spoonbill Mom and chicks near nest 1, July 5th, 2010

Several of the young Spoonbills have fledged and I was able to capture this photo of one of them trying its wings:

Juvenille Spoonbill tests its wings, July 5th, 2010

So you can see how fast these Spoonbills develop.  From just hatched and barely moving to flying in about 6 weeks.  I’ve enjoyed following their progress this year.  What a wonderful opportunity!

The bad news for those of you that haven’t yet visited the Alligator Farm is that you’ve missed most of the nesting season.  Make your plans for next year!

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Lynn and I paid another visit to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm this morning to check on things at the Rookery.  Things are hopping!

After a somewhat slow start (cold weather?), the Rookery has been having a very active and varied nesting season.  If you haven’t visited yet, you need to get over there before you completely miss your chance until next year.  You can still see many species in the nest with chicks, although there are also many juveniles that have grown very large and are even flying around.

According to Gen Anderson – who is the Bird & Mammal Curator at the Alligator Farm (via the birdrookery@yahoogroups.com mailing list), there have been over 250 nests with more than 700 chicks counted in the rookery .  That’s a tremendous number of birds in a relatively small area!  The following species are resident:

Wood storks:

Mama Woodstork preens one of her chicks

Cattle Egrets:

Cattle Egret nest with chicks

Tri-colored Herons:

Tri-Colored Heron nest with chicks

Roseate Spoonbills:

Mother Spoonbill and baby

Great egrets, Snowy egrets, Little Blue Herons, and Green Herons are also in residence.

There are four Spoonbill nests in the rookery and since I’ve never seen Spoonbill nests or chicks, these have been very exciting for me.  This is the first year that they’ve nested at the Alligator Farm and the farthest north they’ve been recorded nesting.  Two of the nests are well hidden at the back of the property, but the other two are easily viewed.  All four contain chicks  although it is difficult to see them, since they’re still so small. The chicks in the easily viewed nests will only be there for about another 5 weeks before they fledge.

I’ve also posted a video I made this morning of one of the spoonbill nests. In it, you can see Mama feeding one of the two babies. You can also listen to all of the noise at the Rookery as the chicks demand food from their parents.

As always, you can click on any of the photos above to go to Flickr, where you can see a larger version.  You can also follow this link to my St. Augustine set to see other photos I’ve made there.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

A few of us from the Photography Interest Group drove over to Blackpoint Wildlife Drive yesterday morning.  We had one new member with us and for the first half of the loop we were all a bit worried about the lack of good photo opportunities — although I had made one sunrise photo that I like.

Swampy sunrise

We didn’t see many birds at first and the water level was down a little bit.   I’m not sure why since I think we’ve had a good amount of rain lately. Perhaps it was due to tides.

We were more than half way around the loop when we came up on two pools on the left hand side with quite a lot of bird activity. It turns out there were large numbers of small minnows in the pools and a variety of herons, ibis and egrets were flying back and forth between the pools feeding on the fish. Situations like this provide a wonderful  opportunity for photographers. Just as in the nest building scenario I wrote about a few weeks ago, the birds act in a somewhat predictable, repeatable way. You can study them and position yourself for good light and to show the birds’ activity in their environment. I was looking for something a little different and spotted this break in the reeds with the sun coming over my shoulder. I only had to wait a little while for an obliging Little Egret to pose between the reeds for me.  Now, if it had only raised its crest!

Remember when you’re making photos of very white birds like this to check your histogram. Make sure your exposure isn’t blowing out the white highlights so that detail is preserved in the white feathers.  If you do have pixels up against the right side of the histogram, use a little negative exposure compensation to move them back toward the left.

Once again patience and persistence paid off for us and everyone in the group had a chance at some very good photos.  I’ve also written here before about not putting your camera away until you’re back in the car.  Yesterday was another example of this very important rule!

Click on either of the photos above to go to Flickr, where you can view them larger.  You can also see other photos I’ve made at Blackpoint in this set on Flickr.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

So we’re going to try something a little different.  This will be a variation on the game “Where’s Waldo”, except you have to guess where I was last Saturday, based on the photos below.  And you have to find me in at least one photo.  We’ll use my Twitter handle and call it “Where’s EdRo?”.  All of these photos were made in the same general area.  To play fair, you aren’t allowed to scroll down too far before you guess. Forensic investigation of EXIF data is possible, but also against the rules.  There’s no prize, but if enough people demand it, I can see about having something for the next time we play.

The point of the game is to remind you that you need to look around and find the non-obvious photos wherever you are.  Go ahead and get the “trophy shots” (photos that everyone takes at a popular spot), but don’t forget to share your unique vision, perspective, and outlook with others.

Want to play? Here goes…

Clue #1: An interesting wall.

Clue #2: Nice light on an Ibis.

Clue #3: Flowers, leaves, sky.

Have you guessed where I was yet? If not, here’s some more clues:

Clue #4: Blue wall, red windows.

Clue #5: River landing and flowers.

Do you have it yet? If not, here’s a couple more.

Clue 6: Surprise and delight.

One last clue:

Clue 7: Rhino profile

If you haven’t guessed yet, then go to this set of mine on Flickr for additional clues.  I’ve added a total of 21 photos there. Some are obvious and some are not. Hopefully they all let you see this place through my eyes.

Thanks for playing my little game.  Now, go out there and look past the obvious shots.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

I’m going to depart from my usual practice of one subject per post and include three different ones in today’s entry.

1. Photos and information on a visit to Gatorland, yesterday.
2. An update on this blog after three years of publication
3. A political comment

Feel free to read the portion you’re interested in, or indulge me and look at all three.

1. Gatorland May Day Update

If you haven’t yet visited Gatorland this year, now is still a great time.  Yesterday morning, I decided to drive down there to see how the rookery is progressing through nesting season.  We’ve  had a cold winter in Florida and as a result, the birds are about a month behind the normal schedule. The last time I visited (in March), it was mostly the great egrets building nests, courting, and sitting on eggs. Yesterday the Great Egrets were still very active (many with large chicks), but there are also Cattle Egrets, Tri-Colored Herons, Anhingas, and Cormorants all very actively fulfilling the purpose of life.

By the way, have you looked lately at the Gatorland blog that Mike Godwin writes ?  He’s posted a report on the current nesting activity, with a lot of detail and photos.  There’s also an active Gatorland Flickr group and looking at the photos posted there on any given day can give you a real good idea of what’s going on.

Here’s some of what I saw yesterday:

Pair of Great Egret chicks in nest: You can get an idea of how far along the Great Egrets are by the size of this cute pair.

Cattle Egret: This one was hiding in the brush, but still posing.  The Cattle Egrets seem to be just getting started with a lot of nest building going on.

Mother Cormorant with just hatched chicks:  Not a great photo, but you can see the chicks beside the very protective mother.  Their eyes were not yet open and there was another un-hatched egg in the nest, so they had to be only hours old.

Common Moorhen Chick: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a moorhen chick before, but I have to admit I haven’t been paying that much attention to this species.  They’re very common in the area.

Wood Storks and chicks on nests: Mike Godwin is a great host at Gatorland.  He made sure we knew where these nests were so we could photograph them.  There were two right next to each other and they were very crowded and active.

You can click on any of the photos above to view them on Flickr.  You can also take a look at my Gatorland set on Flickr for some other photos from yesterday (the last nine in the set) as well as from previous visits.

2. Happy Birthday, Blog!

My first post was on the 4th of May, 2007, so it will be three years old on Tuesday.  Not a long time in absolute terms, but more than a lifetime for some in “internet years”.

The blog has morphed a little bit since then.  Originally it was just a place to share my photos, photo experiences, and talk about photo related ideas. I still do that, but I’ve added a theme around all of this:  I try to find interesting places around here to make photographs and then post blog entries including links to information about the places as well as some hints on what’s there and how to photograph it.  My hope is that this will be interesting to photo enthusiasts visiting the area as well as people who live here.  I know I’ve looked for similar blogs when I travel.

With this one, there are a total of 89 posts so far which is an average of about two per month, although lately I’ve been doing pretty well keeping up with my goal of one post each week.  Of these, 45 are tagged “CFL Photo ops”, about photo opportunities in the area.

As near as I can tell from my server logs (and disregarding spam and robots), I seem to modestly successful – at least some people are reading what I write. If I’m interpreting the CyStats log correctly, I have over 100 RSS subscribers, and about 10 – 30 visitors on average each day. They are from multiple countries, which is really nice.  The most visitors I’ve had in a single day was close to 200 early this year after Jim Goldstein posted his “best photos of 2009″ entry on his blog.  Thanks, Jim!  The most viewed page is the main page, with the My Favorite Photos of 2009 post coming in second.

The most used browser, by a slim margin is Internet Explorer (~51%), followed by Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, etc.  Many people still use IE version 6.0.  If that’s you – update!  Modern browsers are much more capable and secure.

Recent, frequent external search terms include things like: “focus bracketing”, “gatorland photographers”, “central florida photos”, “orlando bird photography”, “alligator farm orlando”, “orlando photo ops”, “photographing birds in central flordia”, “good area to photograph fl”, “central florida places to photo”, “wildflower photography in florida”, “photographing birds in central florida”, “photographing wildlife in central florida”, and “ed rosack”.  I’m pleased that people are finding my blog with those search terms.

Of course, I’m my most loyal reader. I’ve enjoy writing it, but I also really enjoy going back and reading it and looking at the photos. I guess it really is a blog in the sense of a personal journal.

And what’s up with all the weird spam comments?  Do they really think I’ll let those through?  Would anybody?  Why do they keep sending them?

I don’t really have any plans to change the blog going forward.  However, I’d really like to figure out how to encourage more genuine comment and interaction.  And, I’m always open to your ideas and suggestions.  Especially for places around here to visit!

3. Warning – Politics Ahead

Caution – I apologize, but this paragraph is political.  It does relate to photography and nature in general.  Read at your own risk.

As I wrote down the words in topic one above about witnessing nature in all its glory, I couldn’t help but think a great deal about the gulf coast shoreline and what is beginning to happen there to countless birds, their chicks, and other wildlife from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  The impact on people who are continuing to recover from hurricane Katrina will be an additional nightmare still to come.  And the news this morning reports that it will eventually reach the east coast of Florida too as the Gulf Stream current spreads the spill.

The scope of this disaster is unprecedented – and it was a remote possibility.  We can’t jump to conclusions yet, but complacency and the bottom line during the design of this oil drilling rig sure do seem to be causing great damage.  I wonder how many of the decisions that were made in the design were probably financial in nature and not based on the worst case outcome, which by the way is occurring?  The platform was either not designed or not built to preclude or handle it.

I also wonder if there are engineering memos or PowerPoint slides somewhere warning of this type of consequence if the design went forward as planned?  I wonder how many fail safes in the well shut off valve didn’t fail safe and instead just failed due to shoddy workmanship or poor design?  I wonder how the engineers that designed, built, and tested the equipment on that well feel today?  I wonder how their management can sleep at night?  I wonder how long British Petroleum will take to bring the well leak under control?  And I wonder how they will ever undo the damage they’ve done.

So far there are no answers, only questions.  And thousands of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico every hour of every day.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Today’s post is a little different. Instead of talking about a particular Central Florida Photo Op, I’ll share some photo tips.

Bird photography can be very hard, and photographing birds in flight is even more so. In this article, I’ll point out several things that may help you improve your photos.

Great Blue Heron in flight, Orlando Wetlands Park, 1/1000 sec, f/5.6, 300mm, ISO 320

First of all, here are several links to information elsewhere on the web. They cover a lot of things you should do to improve your percentage of “keepers” when photographing birds.

• “Birds in Flight”, Andy Lang: http://www.firstlighttours.com/birds_in_flight_article.html
• “Photographing Birds In Flight”, http://www.wildlife-photography-tips.com/photographing-birds-in-flight.html
• “They touch the heavens”, Moose Peterson: http://www.vividlight.com/Articles/2303.htm
• “Tips for learning how to photograph Birds in Flight”, Jay Paredes: http://www.evergladesphotosociety.org/articles/flightpart01.html

One thing I didn’t see mentioned is how great nest building season is for bird flight photography.

Great Blue Herons like the one above frequently nest in the tops of palm trees. The female will generally stay at the nest, while the male retrieves sticks for her to use. If you come across this situation like we did yesterday at Orlando Wetlands Park, you should take advantage of it to really boost your ability to get good frame filling photos of birds in flight.

Why? Well when they’re building a nest, the birds can be very predictable. The nest is in one location, and frequently the male bird will return to the same tree or general area to get another branch for his mate to use. The nest building usually goes on for quite some time and predictable flight paths together with multiple opportunities are a huge advantage for the observant, prepared photographer.

If you watch the activity for a while, you should be able to determine where to position yourself for the best chance of a good photo. You want to be along the flight path close enough to fill the frame, and have the sun in a good position to light the bird.

Optimize your camera settings for this type of photo and take time between flights to double check your results.

• Do you have a high enough shutter speed (generally 1/1000sec or better)?
• Is your aperture appropriate (one or two stops down from wide open would be best for image quality and depth of field)?
• What’s your ISO set to (as low as possible given the light and desired shutter and aperture)?
• Have you set continuous focus mode and high speed release?
• Did you turn off bracketing from your last HDR shot ?

When the bird takes off (probably into the wind) concentrate on keeping the focus mark on the bird (the eye, if possible). Pan smoothly as the bird flies. For better composition, try to leave a little room in the frame in front of the bird. Wait until there’s a lull in the action before you chimp the shots. Make sure they’re what you expect. If not, adjust and wait for the next flight.

And don’t forget to get some photos of the male as he passes the stick to the female.

One more thing – after the chicks hatch, you can still use this tip. The birds will be out searching for food for the babies, and you can stake out the nest in the same way as they return with a meal.

Great Blue Heron in flight, bringing stick to mate in nest, 1/2500 sec, f/5.6, 300 mm, ISO 640

I hope you liked this photo tip. Let me know if it helps you.

(Note: You can click on either of these photos to see a larger version on Flickr.)

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Intro / Description

Dusk, Lake Eola, 8:14pm, 17mm, 6.0 seconds @ f/8

This large lake in downtown Orlando was formed from a sinkhole and has been a city park since 1892.  It’s famous for its fountain – which unfortunately isn’t working now although it’s supposed to be repaired in 2010.  There are swan shaped paddle boats that you can rent and live swans you can feed along with occasional other birds that you can watch and photograph.  There’s also a playground, a small outdoor café and an amphitheatre for special events.  The night we were there the First Annual Orlando Chillounge Night at Lake Eola was taking place on the east side of the lake, which made for quite a crowd.

We saw a boat leave the dock as we arrived with what looked like fireworks aboard.  We kept an eye on it and tried to be ready when they launched.  After a while, we gave up and of course, they launched right after that.  There was only one quick set.  Lynn really enjoyed watching us  scramble to reset our cameras and by the time we were ready there was nothing left but a few smoke trails.  Oh well, a reason to go back.

If you’re looking for a place in Orlando to take a photo walk, practice some street photography, and / or make some city scape images at sunset – Lake Eola is a good place to start.

Info for Photographers

Photo hints: Get there well before sunset and stay for a while after.  You never know what the sky colors will do.  You’ll want to set up on the south east side for sunset.  After sunset, try a few small aperture / long exposure photos to blur the water in the fountains and make the lights into nice star shapes.

Tripod/Monopod: No problem – there’s plenty of room to set up.  You’ll definitely need one for long exposures.  Bring your cable release or remote too.

Lenses: This is a wide angle photo op.  My 17 – 35mm lens worked nicely to take in the whole lake and cityscape.  To practice your street photography a 35mm will probably work, although you might want to bring another lens (24 – 70?) too.

Best time to visit: You’ve heard me say before that spring is a wonderful time in Central Florida. The weather is just fantastic.  We had temperatures in the 70s and the humidity wasn’t too high.  There were some insects out, but they weren’t the biting kind.

Other: Parking could be a problem depending on what else is going on when you visit.  We were there on a Saturday evening, and even with an event happening at the east end of the lake, we found a parking spot in a lot about a block south for $5.  The park hours are Mon-Sun 6 a.m. – 12 a.m

Summary

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

We’re really blessed in Central Florida with a large number of places that photography and nature enthusiasts can visit.  The Photography Interest Group took another trip to Blackpoint Wildlife Drive yesterday.  There was a lot to see.

I used a 750mm effective focal length lens to shoot this sunrise photo. I like the transparent look of the trees in front of the sun.

A 4 shot panorama.

Kevin McKinney (who has the knack for spotting things) let us know there were kingfishers in the area.  I saw this one (my first ever) and made a very quick photo hand held out the window at 750mm (eq).  Thank goodness for optical stabilization!  It was terribly back lit, but the best I could do. It flew off as soon as we opened the door, living up to their reputation for being very skittish.

Belted Kingfisher

Like the previous time I was there, we saw many spoonbills.  This one posed for us for a while.  It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed the fishing line wrapped around its bill.  Please, please think twice before you throw anything in the water.

3/22/10 update:  Good news!  Kevin Krause reports that the fishing line was gone a little later on.

A beautiful bird. I hope it can get the fishing line untangled from its upper bill.

And finally, here’s another gator eye photo. In this one you can see both Keith and Ed in the upper right.

2 photographers, 4 meters away, 8 foot wild alligator.

These and other photos are also posted in my Blackpoint set on Flickr, where you can view a larger version of them.  For more information on Blackpoint, you can visit the official site, or search my blog for previous posts I’ve done.  Thanks for visiting!

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

We’re very fortunate to have Sandhill Cranes in Central Florida.  You can see these large wading birds all around the area and you often see them in groups of two to four.  Usually the group is a family with two larger birds (the parents) and one or two smaller juveniles.

For a few weeks last year, I regularly saw one family on my way home from work – they were often in a field next to the entrance ramp where I get on the toll road .  It was interesting to watch the young bird grow and eventually leave the parents.  I’ve also seen them in parking lots and even crossing major roads (on foot!).

According to Wikipedia, The Florida Sandhill Crane subspecies is estimated to have some 5,000 individuals remaining and is protected in our state.  Sad fact:  Sandhill Cranes are hunted in several western states and Canada.  Fun fact:  Ten million year old fossils of the Sandhill crane have been found which makes it the oldest known bird species still surviving.

Sandhill Cranes and nest – Nikon D90, ISO 200, f/8, 1/640 sec, Sigma 150-500mm @ 500mm, 60 meters distance

I didn’t realize that Sandhill Cranes nest on the ground.  I saw a nest for the first time yesterday at Vierra Wetlands and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  How has this species survived for ten million years using this strategy?  Can you imagine how difficult it must be to protect a nest from all of the predators in the middle of a marsh?  I saw large alligators not far from this nest and I’m certain that there must be raccoons, snakes and other things that would love to eat eggs or small birds close by.

Alligator on bank at Vierra Wetlands - Nikon D90, ISO 200, f/8, 1/640 sec, Sigma 150-500mm @ 500mm

iBird says that both parents incubate the eggs during the day, but only the female does so at night.  It doesn’t say what the male bird does at night, but it must have to help defend the female.  I can only conclude that these birds have to be very fierce defenders.  Alligators and other predatory animals must learn to leave them alone – after all,  modern alligators have been around for about eighty million years!

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Intro

Tri-color heron at Gatorland

A few weeks ago, I promised to compare the St. Augustine Alligator Farm to Gatorland from the point of view of a nature / wildlife photography enthusiast. And in this post, I’ll do it.

This entry is only a top level summary of what you can expect at each place.  For more information, please look at previous posts I’ve done, which you can find via the blog table of contents or by using the search box at the top of the page.

Heron roosting at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm.

Summary table

Both of these parks have rookeries where wild birds come to roost.  This concentration of avian visitors is very handy for the bird photographer.  Both parks cater to photographers and try to make it easy to capture images of the birds.  Why would you pick one over the other to visit?  This table lists factors that I think would be important when comparing these parks.  I’ve listed each along with a comment to explain and a + or – rating to show which place I think comes out ahead on that factor.

Conclusions

Which one should you go to? For nature and wildlife photography, I would say you probably can’t go wrong with either place, although Gatorland comes out slightly ahead in the comparison.  The staff at both parks is friendly, but Gatorland seems even more so and is especially helpful to photographers.

If you’re going for more than just photography, then  Gatorland is also probably a little more well rounded, with more to do.  On the other hand, the Alligator farm makes for a nice day trip from Orlando when you combine it with a stop in the historical district or the fort.

But you can capture stunning images at both places, so pick the one that is most convenient for you.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.