Gotcha!

[Saorsa]

From Capture and Release - Great Blue Heron Style

[Shadowman]

Nice series.

[Texas Dave]

Good capture on all of them but I like the first one the best! Nice job!

[chauncey]

Brian...#1 is bestest...#2 is bothered by weedy background, maybe a shallower DOF would help...
#3, love the colors of bird, blurry foot?, maybe need faster SS...good job though.

FWIW...I try to keep SS at around 1000-1500 in case of liftoff and f/4 aperture.

[Geoff F]

Looking good to me.

With #2 I think the background grass is sufficiently different different from the bird's head to prevent it from being a serious problem for me. But there are a few very small areas of over exposure around the water edge which I would clone out.

[DEAN01]

Brian, very nice series. Number one is my favorite.

[Saorsa]

Thanks all for the comments. These are straight ooc jpegs cropped to the same aspect ratio for presentation. I used them to document an event at a pond on my usual walking path at https://birdsnbugs.wordpress.com/201...e-heron-style/ .

I don't usually try for BIF shots here because as soon as I lift up above the pond I end up with a background of Condos. The park at the end of the walk is on the water and I can get some good BIF shots there.

You can see the area on Google Earth. I was shooting just above the fork in the road. If you continue along the lower side of the fork you will get to the park that is my usual destination. Plenty of Pelican and Osprey activity there in the mornings.

[John 2]

Excellent series Brian. I wish we had the same variety around here.

[IzzieK]

And I have to wait until we go to Florida as I relate that place to having many birds and taking pictures of them...so in the meantime, I will just wait for the bird-o-graphers here to satisfy my curiosity on how they were photographed. All the same, all excellent shots, Brian...being from Florida you've had a lot of practice photographing them. I love #1...a huge bird with a little catch, really funny looking...

[Saorsa]

The Heron was actually catching the little fish and dropping them back into the water for a young one to practice fishing. That's what caused me to hang around the pond instead of going down to the park. It was an interesting behavioural thing that I hadn't observed before. Here is the young one.



It was acting kind of goofy in the water as if it didn't understand wading.

[IzzieK]

That is very interesting Brian...I suppose they are like humans too wherein we were taught how to fend for ourselves one way or the other while we were young instead of hand feeding us for most of our lives...

[Saorsa]

That is very interesting Brian...I suppose they are like humans too wherein we were taught how to fend for ourselves one way or the other while we were young instead of hand feeding us for most of our lives...

There are plenty of instances of this if you just sit and watch a while. A year or so ago I went into our local wildlife rescue spot in the park. They have several Yellow-crowned Night Herons that can't be released. One of them was working hard to reach through a chainlink fence to get a tiny little twig. It was just beyond it's reach so I pushed it a little closer and watched. It picked it up, ran over to a nesting female and presented it to her. She seemed overjoyed and carefully put it into the nest which contained two young.

I walked around picking up some other small stuff and putting it where the male could get it. There was a flurry of activity as the nest maintenance was accomplished.

The next day I was caught pushing a couple halfway into the fence and was chastised for 'poking sticks at birds'. I invited the well meaning volunteer to watch what happened. She then commented that they already had the babies and didn't need to build a nest. I had to point out that the additional material was intended to put a clean base like changing the newspaper in a parrot cage and that this was the only time in their lives that the juveniles could learn how to build a nest.

She got the cleaners to stop sweeping the twigs away.