Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)

The other day, while I was photographing the Osprey nest, I think this guy got a bit jealous or maybe he was just curious. He came right over to me and hung around very close as if to say, "photograph me; I want to be famous, too". It was a great opportunity to oblige him, don't you think?

Great Blue Herons can be found all over the United States; anywhere water is; they are not fussy, they like both salt and fresh water. They are tall, stately birds that move slowly and deliberately when stalking their prey. When they decide the time is right, they strike with lightning speed. They are similar to cats on a hunt. The Great Blue Heron's diet consist mainly of fish, but they'll eat anything, snakes, lizards, rodents, other birds and small mammals.

Great Blue Herons hunt alone and it is rare to see more than one of them in the same place. However, they nest in colonies. There may be as many as 100 nests in one tree. They are monogamous during a season, but find new mates every year. 

These birds are very long (38-55 inches) with a wing span of 66-79 inches. Despite their size, they only weigh about 5 or 6 pounds, due to hollow bones that enable them to fly.

Wood Stork

Wood Stork

This Wood Stork was probing for dinner in the pond at the Thompson Sports Complex Park, in Gulfport, FL. The Wood Stork is the only real stork we have in the United States.

Wood Storks stand between 40-44" tall. Their heads are bare. They fly with their necks extended. Wood Storks can be found on or near the coast, cypress swamps and mangroves. They nest in colonies. Wood Storks are resident in Florida and Georgia and rarely along the coast from S Carolina to Texas.

Please Help With ID

ID Wanted

I've posted photos of this duck and his/her mate about a year ago. I'm still trying to find out what kind of duck this is. With all the nature photographers out there, I can't believe no one knows what it is called. I've only found one other photo of ducks that look like this through Google and I think it was the same pair. Whoever posted it didn't include the name, so it was no help.

They are so pretty. They hang on a little pond in Gulfport, FL along with some Mottled Ducks, White Ibis, a pure white duck, a few Mallards and a couple of Moorhens. There is only 1 pair of them. They are much larger and longer-backed than Mallards as you can see in this photo.

Your help is greatly appreciated. Thanks for looking.

Black Skimmer Landing

In keeping with the bird theme that seems to be very popular this week on our blogs due to a couple meetups that included bird shooting, here's just one more.

Just before sunset every night, the Black Skimmers, Laughing Gulls and Terns gather on the beaches to roost. This one, a Black Skimmer is just coming in. It's a pretty amazing sight to see them all lined up--usually facing the same direction roosting on the beaches.

As a bonus, I'm attaching a second image showing more of the flock. There are probably 100 or more birds on this beach just like this.

I've seen them flying at night picking up food on my canal in my back yard. It's amazing to watch how they get their food. If you look closely, you'll notice that their lower beak is quite a bit longer than the upper beak. That's so they can fly (really fast) with their lower beak in the water scooping up food to eat. They have very long wings for their body size. I'll see if I can find a photo where I've caught them swimming for a post later on.

Settings used for these photos are as follows. The shooting mode is in continuous in case one of them or many of them take off, ISO is 200 because although it is nearing sunset, it's still quite bright. The exposure is 1/250 at 7.1, in aperture priority at 250mm with my 55-250mm lens. I used partial metering off the beach so as to not blow out the whites. The shadows were lightened slightly using Lightroom.