As I occasionally do I went archive-diving last night and ran across a series of Snowy Egret photos I like that I’ve never posted on Feathered Photography. Some of my inexperience in those days may show in the images but I still enjoy them and of course the reminiscing.
Two keepers of two different species in flight within seconds of each other is a rarity for me.
This is a six image series of a Snowy Egret in flight as it loses elevation in order to land.
Here’s another photo where I like the background as much as the bird and in large part that’s due to the quality of the bokeh.
Catch lights are highly desirable, to the point that many bird photographers simply delete any photo that doesn’t have them (a painful process, to be sure).
I don’t post Snowy Egrets very often. Maybe that’s because they’re such a difficult subject to expose properly.
It goes without saying that the appeal of a photo isn’t always universal. After all, viewers have varying tastes and tolerance for imperfection. I suspect this image will be one of those but I like it even though it’s far from perfect.
This fish must have been an epicurean delight because there sure were a lot of birds fighting over it for a long time.
I suppose that my post this morning is my petulant way of responding to something I saw posted on Facebook last night that raised my hackles a bit.
This pugnacious juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron decided to take on a group of Snowy Egrets for the best fishing spot in this pond at Bear River MBR three days ago.
I believe that many folks think that when there’s a reflection of a photo subject on the surface of water that reflection is an exact upside-down version of the subject itself (unless the reflection is disturbed by irregularities on the water surface). That’s really not the case.
The distinctive bright yellow feet and deeply contrasting jet-black legs of the Snowy Egret can really grab your eye when they’re visible above the water’s surface or even when the egret is in flight – so much so that both the bird and its feet are often referred to as “golden slippers”.
Yesterday morning the Pied-billed Grebes at Farmington were having a bit of a feeding frenzy and I was able to capture several instances of interesting feeding behavior.
Snowy Egrets are spectacularly beautiful birds that we came very near to losing. In the early 1800s birds in North America were so numerous that John James Audubon insisted that no act of man could ever wipe a species out, including the Snowy Egret – yet by 1913 the Snowy Egret was flirting with extinction. The cause? – lady’s hats.
