Before field work today I did some pre-breakfast birding around Summerland Key. First I checked the lagoon on East Shore Drive which held 7 Tricoloured Herons (very active feeders), 7 White Ibises, 18 Snowy Egrets, 8 Greater Yellowlegs, and singles of Belted Kingfisher, Great White Heron, Great Blue Heron, Brown Pelican, Great White Heron, Pied-billed Grebe, Ring-billed Gull and American Kestrel. A pair of Ospreys were active at a roadside nest. In the surrounding scrub were Gray Catbird, Palm Warbler, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Northern Mockingbird and 12 Red-winged Blackbirds while a few Turkey Vultures circled overhead.
I then moved on to a small freshwater pond on Katherine Street which held 14 Blue-winged Teal, a pair of Wood Ducks, two pairs of American Coot, a Pied-billed Grebe, 2 Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, a Great Blue Heron, and a White Ibis. Wandering around the roadside, a group of 8 White Ibises were probing in the verge. Later in the day, I saw two Northern Waterthrush while kayaking some small mangrove channels on Sugarloaf Key.
The most interesting reptile seen while kayaking in the mangroves this week was a Mangrove Salt Marsh Snake (Nerodia clarkii compressicauda). Andrew and Bernhard found it and mananged to photograph it. We've seen many Green Iguanas (Iguana iguana) too. This species is not native to Florida (Central & South America) and is classed as invasive. There are some real monsters around, several feet long, but are remarkably agile in the thin branches of the canopy. I've seen them in Peru but never this close - they don't seem too bothered at human approach here. This one below was one of 25 iguanas sunning themselves at dawn around a small freshwater pond on Summerland Key.
I’m back in the Florida Keys on field work. Before the plane had even landed at Miami I saw a Loggerhead Shrike flying around some vegetation on the runway. Today I got great looks at Yellow-crowned Night Heron, Brown Pelican, Royal Tern, White-crowned Pigeon, White Ibis, Osprey, Belted Kingfisher, Red-bellied Woodpecker and Great White Heron. Unfortunately water and cameras don't mix (unless you have under-water housing) but here is photo from last time.
A few months ago in London's China Town, I saw this sake (a type of rice wine) in a small market. I really bought it becauses of the attractive packaging which depicts the Japanese or Red-crowned Crane (Grus japonensis). The brand name Sawanotsuru translates as 'crane of the swamp' from Japanese mythology. I made these images in my home-made studio white box.
These images were created in-camera using a long shutter speed and wide-angle lens to capture the head-bobbing trails of Eurasian Coots (Fulica atra) as they fed on a city lake.
I've started taking a few birds photographs in context now - ok, mainly pigeons and their 'famous' environment. I think these are much more interesting than just the birds isolated with a narrow depth of field and no background. What landmarks should I use for the next backdrops? A red telephone box or red bus would be iconic! Unfortunately Trafalgar Square has very few pigeons these days.
I often overhear tourists describing the swans as elegant and graceful but in a city park in winter they often just form an ungainly squabble for bread. I attempted to re-capture their elegance again by using long shutter speeds and deliberate over-exposure.
Since the weekend, fog has been forming around London. In towards the centre of the city it has not quite been 'pea soup' but it lingered long enough for me to take these images before the sky cleared to blue for capturing the Starlings below.
