The huge American White Pelican

There are two species of pelicans in north America, and during the winter months, the Everglades are crazy with both. Unlike its cousin the brown pelican that lives here year round, the American white pelican lives far north during the summer months in nesting colonies. But during the winter, the Everglades lights up with the white pelican and it is a spectacular view that is so appealing to the eye when groups of these large birds can be spotted from great distances. Imagine paddling through the Ten Thousand Islands dominated by blue water and sky separated by a line of mangroves. Then imagine a white aberration in the distance that looks like a large white wall on the water. Pelicans for sure. Look up at the sky and you will see a squadron of black and white winged birds, circling above. This will happen later in the morning after the temperatures have sufficiently increased to create a thermal layer. These are the wintering white pelicans of the Everglades.

White pelicans are foragers, unlike the brown pelican that is a proficient dive bomber. The white pelicans typically work in groups in the shallow water, where they hunt for fish. These large birds (known to weigh as much as 30 lb) can consume over 4 lb of fish in a day (the pouch can hold 3 gallons of water), yet they are considered to be non-competitive to fishermen because they eat mostly non-game fish. However, I learned that with the increase in catfish farming in the southeastern states that these concentrated shallow fish ponds have become a popular foraging site for the white pelican. Normally, the birds spend about 1/3 of the day foraging and the remainder is spent loafing. But in the catfish ponds, they spend only 4% of their day foraging because they don't have to work as hard to fill up on fish. In the Everglades, the white pelicans can be spotted in the shallow waters of large bays or grassy water areas such as in Charley Creek or near the Hells Bay area. They work together to herd the fish and dip their large beaks into the water to capture them.


Photographing the white pelican has become one of my favorite challenges. Usually, I am photographing them as they loaf on a sand or oyster bar and they are typically in large number. It is difficult to approach them to get close enough for photographing, but when you do get close enough, the other challenge is composing the shot.



For these group shots, I try to get them all within the frame, but often there is a section of a bird sticking into the frame. I like their bright orange beaks and legs and try to capture the birds all facing the camera in some way. Occasionally, you can capture one flying by.


The white pelican is a thing of beauty, so large with its 10-ft wing span. In the fall, they usher in the winter season with their migration into the Everglades where they reside until spring when they leave to go north. You know their trek north is coming soon when you see the horn on the beak appear and the orange pouch, legs and skin around the eyes become more vivid; all indications that the bird is getting ready to breed.

Hope to see you again soon, white pelican, in the sunlight of the Everglades.

From my window

I never thought it possible, but I photographed through my second floor window, which was not too dirty having been cleaned recently. Often, during the early sunlit morning as I sit at my desk working, I look through this window. For the past few months, I noticed several spiny orb weaver webs built between two large trees,square in front of me at eye level. The morning sun provides a back light such that I can more closely observe the spider and its silky orb expanding 1-2 ft across.

A few days ago, I took interest in a couple of them. One was building or rebuilding its web, having only 3 or 4 outer circles completed. The background from my view (slightly above the spiders) is messy, consisting of buildings, grass, shrubs and trees, water and the reflections of these objects in the water. Oh yes, and ducks. With a wide enough aperture, these objects will blur out as most of them were several dozen feet away. Lighting was tricky however, with shadows and highly lit areas competing with each other.

At any rate, I set up my exposure to brighten the web and spider as much as possible and keep the background consistent and dark. I began composing, with window between me and my subject.To get an even background, I had to negotiate around my desk and computer, and had only a narrow range to work with. From the following two photos, you can see the progress made by this busy spider.


The next day, I noticed that the same little spider was rebuilding its web. Next to it was its neighbor that had a larger web. It also appeared to be doing some maintenance work on it. The next two images demonstrate some of this work.


The spider's web requires some support lines that shoot out from the center through the orb, and it appeared that she was rebuilding these, as seen here.


Soon, she was back in her center resting spot, with full support.

For post processing, I cropped only some of these photos, particularly the images of the larger spider that showed up so well in the back light. I also liked the light reflecting on the web, so I used some curve work to lighten the lights while maintaining a dark background as much as possible. No cloning or noise reduction were used on these photos. As Dorothy once said after returning from Oz, "If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard." Well, maybe I will, but it sure is a good feeling to know that the spiny orb weaver is a few feet away.

Photographing birds on an 8-day trip through the Everglades

Before the new year, we get out for our annual long trip through the Everglades. Usually, we do not get many opportunities to camp more than 2 or 3 days at a time during the season, so we take advantage of our holiday time and get in as long a trip as possible. While I love these trips and there is so much to photograph, bird photography usually takes second seat because of the traveling involved. No doubt, I see lots of birds on these trips. But almost always, I am moving and so are they. On occasion, I come into a concentrated area where birds are plentiful and when given the opportunity, stay in the area long enough to photograph. Always, my favorite location for bird photography is the primeval area of Charley and Gopher Creeks, a two day paddle (or very long day) away. The night before we got into the creeks, we camped on Turkey Key, only one mile from the entrance into Charley creek. Here's a shot of our beach camp.

We left the island at 7 am, with the sun beginning to rise as we entered the dark mangrove tunnel. The tunnel is about 1 1/2 miles long before reaching more open terrain. Here is a shot of the tunnel as one of our paddling friends cleared the path by sawing a couple logs that blocked the path.


I include these photos to offer the reader a glimpse of the variety of environment we are exposed to out here. From the sandy gulf beach, the mangrove tunnel led us into a hurricane-damaged wet prairie that intermingles with mangroves. As we paddled out of the dark canopy into the light of the openness, I noticed that the prairie scene was behind the large mangroves and buttonwoods that lined the creek. But what I noticed mostly were that hundreds of birds, and all I had was thick mangroves and mud between me and them. I found an opening and pulled my boat up the mud bank and staked out. I stepped onto a dead branch that was large enough to support my foot and proceeded to get out, one hand on a tree branch and the other holding my camera with 400mm lens attached. As soon as I got my other foot on ground, I instantly sunk in a foot and a half of mud. With two steps forward, I was on firmer grassy ground and heading toward the bird scene. The birds, by now, had mostly moved further away. Nevertheless, the were relatively close and busy feeding. The water holes they were congregating around must have been loaded with bait fish and other marine edibles. Here's the best I got from my little excursion out of the boat.



I could not stay long as I had four other people with me and this was not an area to get stuck in at low tide. I got my muddy self back into the boat and continued exploring. For the remainder of the morning, I stayed in the area closer to Gopher Creek which had plenty of water, while the others paddled on. This is an amazing place to find birds, I felt like a kid in a candy store. The challenge was that this is a totally wild place and birds have lots of choices, one of which is to stay far away from the intruder. I tried many attempts at photographing them and managed some decent shots. The highlight was the American Avocet, a first siting for me. There were 3 of them busily feeding and while the egrets and other birds flew away from me, these guys stayed and allowed me to get very close.


Here are some other scenes from Charley and Gopher Creek, the best place to be in the Everglades on a warm, cloudless day, in a canoe.

A holiday on the Anhinga Trail

For several weeks now, I have had so little opportunity to get out with the camera as I anxiously wait for our yearly holiday Everglades adventure. At last, today I took time away from my busy preparations and headed out to the Anhinga Trail. I try to visit the trail 2 or 3 times during the winter months, but it had been almost 12 months since my last visit. I had no expectations.

I arrived shortly after 7:30 am and was the only one on the boardwalk. The sun was coming out from behind clouds and soon, it lit up the water and grasses. Anhingas, both male and female were resting in trees, but I did not see one nest. Photographing the birds as they rest is difficult with the busy background of the trees and grasses. With the anhinga birds, they will almost always face away from you because you are generally shooting with the sun behind. The bird fans out its wings to warm and dry itself, so you get a beautiful view of the anhinga feathers. As they preen I like to capture the bird with its head slightly turned toward the camera. As these birds can be relatively close, you can play around with many compositions. The anhinga, as a result, is one of the most photographed birds in southern Florida. With a wide enough aperture, the background is blurred out of focus enough to provide a nice bokeh. For the photograph below, I cropped out the top to exploit the panoramic position of the bird. Next, I applied a gaussian blur to the background, in attempt to give the bird more definition.


The large pond was very calm this morning, perfect for photographing a gator or water bird. The thing I like most about alligators is how they appear in the water. Their presence commands attention as they quietly move with a serpetine movement of their tail. One of my best times photographing gators was in Fisheating Creek several years ago. I paddled on to an area that was crazy with sunning gators. As soon I approached, they all disappeared into the water. I sat quietly, not moving and waited. Within a couple minutes, they appeared again with their binocular eyes sticking out of the water. Awesome to capture them like that.

In calm and debris-free water, a single gator stands out, with its leathery skin and dramatic textures. Because of this, I am compelled to photograph them with a lot of negative space surrounding them, whether it is only their binocular eyes sticking out of the water, or their head spaced a short distance from the back, which is separated from the tail. I like back or side light because of the contrast of light on the gator's skin. This first photograph of the big reptile is pretty much as shot, except I lightened the water and converted to grayscale. I really like the spiny tail above the bulky body.

For this next one, I played a bit more with it. This time, I lightened the water, but not enough to remove the ripples in the foreground. I converted to grayscale, and because I liked the pattern in the water, I added warming filter to the scene, while masking the gator.

The next one is also converted to grayscale, except this time, I added a diffuse glow filter to it.

And last, I liked the contrast of the sidelit gator against the reflections in the water. Nothing was done to this photo, except a bit of cropping.

After the gator, I found a purple galinule, which is probably one of the most difficult birds to photograph, at least on this Anhinga Trail. They are rather shy and with the messy surroundings, difficult to capture isolated. Nevertheless, the bird allowed several of us to look on from only a 10-ft distance. I always try to capture this bird with its magnificent feet showing, but this bird did not cooperate much in that regard. Here is one attempt at capturing it as it captures its food.
If you have anything against photographing vultures because you think they are ugly and disgusting, than you will be disappointed on a grand scale here at the Anhinga Trail. Today, there were a few hundred black vultures, literally on the trail. Many in the trees and flying overhead, but dozens of them at your feet. With that, they are irresistible to photograph. I do like the vulture; it has a certain charm and twinkle in its eye. For these guys, I get down at eye level and attempt to capture a portrait with a nice background. For this one, the water and grass served that purpose. Then I wait for that shot where the bird is turned toward the camera. As I am approximately 6-10 feet away from it, I close the aperture (f10 or 11).


Along the canal, I tried to capture a fishing anhinga, but she was almost always behind the grasses, where she seemed to be successful at capturing small fish. A few cormorants were swimming, but I never saw one capture a fish. Usually, the cormorants are good for photographing, but not today. I was there for only 3 hours, a short dose of the Everglades was just what I needed. Now, I will get back to preparing for our trip. Next blog will hopefully be about that trip. I will have the new camera and will be experimenting for the first time with neutral density filters while camping on the gulf beaches. Until then, happy holidays to all.

Where the canoe takes you

I have always said that the canoe came first and the camera followed. The canoe takes me to these beautiful places where I see fantastic animals. The camera followed because I wanted to preserve those moments; it's since evolved into more than that. This all got me thinking about the idea of feeling in control. I think one can go through life believing they are in control. But step outside of that reality and explore the wilderness and it becomes apparent immediately that absolutely nothing is in your control (I believe this is why so many people do not enjoy being in the wilderness). Out there, the weather, the tides, the water, the animals we try to photograph, none of those things do we have control over.

Out there, you are only an observer. Once you accept that fact, many gifts start coming your way. These gifts are often not easy to come by; they require experience, perseverance and patience, innovation and problem solving, and sometimes just plain luck. As you attempt the challenges, you allow yourself to let some things go, but while one door closes another may open as you become a better paddler, a better navigator, a better photographer. You study the animals and learn their behaviors. You realize that you can photograph the beautiful Everglades, but only on their terms. Negotiate the terms and you will accumulate the many gifts it has to offer. Here are a few gifts from over the years as I explored and learned.