I’m not a birder. My wife is. We’ve each chosen a hobby that relies on lenses. My wife can spot the subtle details that differentiate similar species of birds. I’m lucky to distinguish a turkey from a towhee so I usually ignore birds and point my camera at mountains or rivers or trees. Some birds, however, are difficult to ignore. On a trip to Florida earlier this year I decided to get some experience photographing birds. Big birds.
I had just walked onto the Sanibel Island Fishing Pier when I noticed that a lone bird was flying in my direction. My camera was on shutter priority so I upped the speed to 1/500 second and snapped a shot.
It was an osprey and, much to my surprise, it landed atop a lamp post right next to me. After moving around a bit as if it were trying to get comfortable, it rose up, and with a squawk, quickly flew off again. The reason for it’s rapid departure was soon obvious; a second osprey had swooped in to chase it away. They flew up, down and around like battling fighter planes in a war movie. After a short while they were both gone. The precious lamp post perch stood vacant. The total time for this set of eight photos (the 1 above along with the 7 below) was 1 minute and 8 seconds.
I was reasonably pleased with the results of that minute-long photo shoot. Some could have been sharper, however, so I upped the shutter speed to 1/1000 sec and wandered off to see what else I could find. Further down the beach an osprey sat alone in a tree but I wasn’t sure if it was one of the two squabbling birds from earlier. A stork also sat alone. There were no pregnant women on the beach so he didn’t have much to do. Then the pelicans began to arrive for dinner. They are beautiful in flight but there’s plenty of room for improvement in their table manners! They didn’t seem to bother the snowy egret passing by.
Further down the beach a reddish egret was gliding in for a landing. With my camera set to high-speed shutter I framed the bird and squeezed off a few shots. I could have sworn I heard the tires of a 757 hit the tarmac when this bird landed. My camera’s high speed shutter is rated at 7 frames-per-second and these three images all have exactly the same capture time right down to the second.
With the sun getting low and my parking pass about to expire, I decided to head back to the motel. I’ll have to try again to capture photographs of some of these majestic birds. After all, a bird in the lens is definitely worth two on the beach.
[Important note: I sought my wife’s assistance to identify some of these birds.]