outdoor photography

Sunrise over Miami Canon Powershot G7 X Sunday I went with some friends on a pelagic trip out to Miami.  I've never birded  in Miami-Dade County before, so I was hoping for some lifers.  We went out on Roberto Torres' boat, the Xenia V, out of the Black Point Marina, and he was fantastic.  He has a great boat, he knows what he's doing, and he's a birder who's as interested in the birds as we are.  It's a great combination. You can see his summary of our trip here . Royal Terns Near the Jetty We had west winds all day, though, so birds were sparse.  We didn't see a single shearwater the whole day, and we saw only a handful of Sooty Terns--no Bridled Terns, noddies or tropicbirds.  We did see a few jaegers though: one Pomarine Jaeger, one Long-tailed Jaeger, one other jaeger flying with it that was likely also a Long-tailed Jaeger (though we didn't get a good enough look to rule out Parasitic Jaeger definitively). White-crowned P...

Royal Tern Royal Terns may be our most common tern.  I always enjoy watching them fish, plunging into the water in search of prey. I love photographing them along coastal beaches. They are one of our largest terns, second only to Caspian Terns, but their long orange bills and pale under the wings. Royal Tern Royal Tern Royal Tern Royal Tern Royal Tern the young tern on the right was constantly begging for food. Royal Tern Royal Tern

Royal Tern I'm teaching at a Camera Club tonight, and the topic will be exposure compensation for wildlife photography.  I wrote a three page handout and also put together a PowerPoint presentation for tonight.  I thought some of you may want to see these, so I'm including a couple links to them here: Lesson Handouts Lesson PowerPoint Feel free to download and use these for your own personal use.  Please do not use them for any other purpose without permission.

Brown Pelican Yesterday morning I went out to Jetty Park near Port Canaveral.  I went there to see gulls.  I wanted to see black-backed gulls, but I was also hoping to get better at identifying immature gulls. I'm getting pretty good at identifying adult gulls, but immatures still give me some trouble at times.  I didn't realize that, since I'm not a Brevard County resident, I would be charged $10 to enter the park.  But I got over that irritation when I got out of the car and right off the bat found one adult Great Black-backed Gull, and then five minutes later, an adult Lesser Black-backed Gull.  Then I saw three Bonaparte's Gulls floating in the water. As I walked over to the beach, I found younger gulls to test my ID skills.  The one below is a Lesser Black-backed Gull. Lesser Black-backed Gull But the gull below gave me some trouble. It was a large gull, and I'm thinking it's a first year Great Black-backed Gull, given its large size, wi...

Ruddy Turnstone Yesterday morning I took my daughter and my parents to Ponce Inlet for some fun at the beach. Since I was primarily being a dad, I didn't do much birding, but I did bring my camera and I did scan the horizon some to see what may be flying by.  I was hoping to get lucky and start my year with some gannets, scoters, and other fun birds, but all I found was a few Northern Gannet.  But I sill had fun walking the beach with my daughter photographing the birds near shore. Sandwich and Royal Terns Ring-billed Gull Brown Pelican Royal Tern At one point my daughter and I walked out onto the jetty, and I kept my eye out for a Purple Sandpiper. I didn't find one, but I did find two more birds, this time two Royal Terns, with fishing line dangling from them. In the photo below, it looks like the fishing line is actually attached to the fish in is mouth, but the the other one was hooked near the belly. That makes four birds in the last two visits. ...

Merlin This morning I went out to the Canaveral National Seashore hoping to find another Razorbill and a Surf Scoter. I found neither, but sometimes you can have a great day even when you find nothing you hoped for.  We first dropped a couple of the "vistas" on the way to the seashore, and we saw a couple Ruddy Ducks and what I now believe was an Iceland Gull--rare for Florida.    We then stopped at parking lot 7 and found nothing unusual--some Herring Gulls, Ring-billed Gulls, lots of Royal Terns, and several birds so far out that they couldn't be identified even with a 60x scope.  We then drove up to parking lot 12 and found the photographic highlight of the morning--a Merlin in a tree eating what appears to be a Ruddy Turnstone. On the way home we dropped by Parish Park (just east of the Max Brewer bridge) and found a Bonaparte's Gull with some Sanderlings. Ruddy Duck Ring-billed Gull Royal Tern Bonaparte's Gull Sanderling Sander...

Northern Gannet I returned to Lighthouse Point Park at Ponce Inlet again in the hopes of finding a Razorbill. We found one far off the jetty.  My father, who's in town for Christmas, located it in his scope, and I was able to locate it briefly with my binoculars.  It was very far away (I probably would not have been able to identify it with my binoculars), the winds were strong and the waves were high, and the Razorbill appeared to be spending a lot of time "flying" under water.  So no photos of the Razorbill, but later this week we're hoping to go to the gulf where people have been getting pretty good photos of Razorbills. Black Skimmer Black Skimmers, though, were a very different story. There were many there, and a couple were actively bathing and skimming by the shore, making me very happy.  Gulls were numerous too, though not like the last time I came came here.  We found only Herring, Ring-billed and Laughing Gulls, plus Royal and Sandwich Terns...