Take Flight
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.
Great Egret in flight. Majestic bird. Patient, efficient hunter. Beautiful. Graceful – both in flight and wading through the water (or even standing on thick clumps of floating kelps!) For me right up there with eagles and hawks. After witnessing some recent dsiplays of abject ignorance and spite I needed to post something that helps make my own spirit soar.
Ruffled Feathers
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.
How about few more shorebird pictures…
Yesterday I had a dental appointment in Waterford, CT but I also had a new lens I was really excited to test out, so I took the camera with me. After the appointment I headed towards the coast and discovered a state propert known as “The Seashore Center.” It looks like it was once a school or some such, but now it is run down and looks abandoned. There is no vehicular traffic allowed, but pedestrians are welcome. The shore is only about 1/2 mile from the entrance.
I took tripod and gear down to the sandy beach and was greated by a dozen or more cormorants, a handful of gulls and a few common terns. One of the terns eventually landed on some pilings set out from the beach a ways. The cormorants took up the remaining pilings as well as the stone jetty. I enjoyed watching the terns much further up the beach diving for fish from 20 to 30+ feet up, straight down and in. When this common tern finally came back to one of the pilings it fluffed it feathers and posed for me for a while. It also started calling, turning every o often to begin calling out to a different quarter.
Preening Time
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.
Just as I was about to leave the beach, this Great Egret swooped onto a piling. Balancing on one leg it began preening it beautiful feathers. I quickly lowered one leg of my just put away tripod and used it as a monopod to get a few good pictures.
This was the first egret I saw that landed anywhere nearby. During the hour I spent on the beach I had seen a number of them flying up and down the coast, so I was very excited to have this one stop right in front of me, especially with the new lens combination so I could get right up close to him. Just a quickly as he arrived, he launched himself into the air and flew off down the coast.
Unfortunately I discovered when I got home that I had had the ISO set to 1600 the whole time! Fortunately I shot entirely in RAW mode and was able to remove the more offensive ISO noise at the expense of a little image softening. A hard learned lesson to be sure.
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