outdoor photography

Bald Eagle Flying Away with a  Stolen Rock Pigeon I walking around  the marina  in Sanford a  little while ago, and I  had a pretty memorable experience. As I walked by a tree, a young Cooper's Hawk with a Rock Pigeon flushed and flew up into a different tree. That was surprising and cool enough, but a Bald Eagle must have seen all that happened, and it  flew over to investigate the tree with the Cooper's Hawk. Bald Eagle It was so close to me that this is a full frame image. With its eyes on the Cooper's Hawk it didn't seem to care about me one bit. It then descended into the tree, and the Cooper's Hawk freaked out, flew into another tree, and dropped its prey. This photo is not as sharp as I would like, but I believe this is a full frame image, or nearly so. The action took place so close to me, I didn't even have  time to back up. Cooper's  Hawk Freaking out and heading into another tree with a Rock Pigeon Bald  Eagle...

Royal Tern Yesterday morning I arrived in Cocoa at 5am for the Cocoa Christmas Bird Count.  This is my second year participating, and it's always a lot of fun.  We were out from about 6:30am to 6:30pm, counting all the birds we could find our area.  Easily the biggest highlights for me were seeing a White-winged Scoter, the first I've seen in Florida, and a Common Loon, the first for me this year in Florida. We saw about 18,000 scaup, and while most all of them were Lesser Scaup, I found one Greater Scaup in my photos among the rafts of Lessers. There were also huge numbers of Laughing and Ring-billed Gulls, American Robins and Yellow-rumped Warblers.  But we also saw several species that are unusual for that area, even though they're common elsewhere.  In particular, our group was excited to see Tufted Titmice and a couple House Finches.  Other highlights for me were seeing 4 Painted Buntings, 8 Horned Grebes, 2 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, 1 Northern H...