As I walked along the edge of one of the ponds, I came upon a break in the stands of marsh reeds. Lo and behold there was a great blue heron wading in the shallows. As I brought my camera up and looked through the viewfinder, I found that the sight before me was less than picturesque. The great blue heron was facing away from me and the only clear shot was of it's butt.
I focussed on it's head and waited for it to do something....anything. It just stood there like a statue. Getting tired of seeing nothing, I was about to get on with my hike when it suddenly speared it's head into the still waters. Out of reflex I hit the shutter and fired off a burst of shots. Good thing I was already prefocussed. It was over before I even knew it. I wasn't even sure that the heron had caught anything since the moment was there and gone. It wasn't until I reviewed the pics at home that I had discovered that I grabbed a shot of it catching the fish! Can anyone ID the fish? It has an interesting red tail and fins.
Next I came upon a pond that was slowly drying up. It was quite shallow with some marsh reeds growing up out of an muddy island in the middle. There were a few avocets and black necked stilts mucking around in the mud looking for a snack.
I found this snowy egret down by the creekbed. I was able to slowly inch myself closer to it inorder to get this portrait shot. Nice mullet! Hehe.
While I was preoccupied with photographing the snowy, I kept on hearing this buzzing activity all around me. At first I didn't think much of it, but after finishing my photoshoot with the snowy egret, I noticed that the sound was much closer to me than I first realized. Looking up I spotted this.
A bee swarm! Yikes! I quickly backed up and gave them plenty of space. I was glad I didn't walk into them while playing around with my camera settings or reviewing pics.
Crossing a small bridge, I came upon this mourning dove sitting pretty in the sunshine. Usually I find them in pairs but this fellah was all by his lonesome self.
Here's one more shot of a Forster's Tern in flight. They are so fun to watch while they zip around in the air. It is one of my goals to photograph one diving into the water for food one day.
Well that's all the photos I have from my recent outings. I hope you guys enjoyed viewing them as much as I enjoyed taking them. I was very impressed with this canon 400mm f5.6 lens that I had rented for the weekend. So much so that I just place an order to buy it. Until next time...
Thanks for looking
- Hung
