High Alert
April 5th, 2014
An estuary ran alongside our resort. At low tide you could walk out on the mud and explore. I saw various types of herons and shorebirds there, many of them familiar to me from my vacations to the Outer Banks. But an exciting new bird was Northern Jacana. This handsome, extraordinarily long-toed wader was very common; I could always find at least one of them foraging by the dock at any time of day. They were skittish though. I had to approach slowly and quietly to win their trust (and failed to win it more often than not.)
One of my best photo ops occurred one day when a grackle across the estuary made a piercing alarm call--the kind of alarm call that means "raptor!" The nearby jacana immediately stood up as high as he could and looked in all directions. The possible flying danger was a bigger concern than little ol' me, so I was able to approach closely.
1680x1050 wallpaper
1680x1050 wallpaper
Photo by Michael Britton
The estuary at low(-ish) tide. You can actually see a jacana in this picture too if you look realllly carefully!
April 5th, 2014
An estuary ran alongside our resort. At low tide you could walk out on the mud and explore. I saw various types of herons and shorebirds there, many of them familiar to me from my vacations to the Outer Banks. But an exciting new bird was Northern Jacana. This handsome, extraordinarily long-toed wader was very common; I could always find at least one of them foraging by the dock at any time of day. They were skittish though. I had to approach slowly and quietly to win their trust (and failed to win it more often than not.)
One of my best photo ops occurred one day when a grackle across the estuary made a piercing alarm call--the kind of alarm call that means "raptor!" The nearby jacana immediately stood up as high as he could and looked in all directions. The possible flying danger was a bigger concern than little ol' me, so I was able to approach closely.
1680x1050 wallpaper
1680x1050 wallpaper
Photo by Michael Britton
The estuary at low(-ish) tide. You can actually see a jacana in this picture too if you look realllly carefully!
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dagibbs
April 5th, 2014 at 4:21 pm
Of course, the only Mike photo is scenery, not bird. :)
Suzanne
Yup. His lens doesn't do birds so well unless they're big and close. (I have a landscape lens too but seldom use it, I enjoy the close-ups more.)
dagibbs
April 6th, 2014 at 3:04 pm
And, I'll bet that switching lenses frequently would get annoying.
I guess, though, your photographic preferences do complement each quite nicely.