Viera Wetlands and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge Revisited

Black skimmer in the rain

As I am sitting in front of my computer going over old slides and thinking of times in the past, while waiting until New Year's Eve for my next injection in the back open that this will take away my pain and I can get out and do more than I have been doing.

Today I started viewing some of my photos from my three week trip to Florida with my son that I did just after I retired.  All the pictures that I am going to show you today were taken with a Nikon D300s and a Sigma 150-500 lens.  All the pictures were reprocessed in light room, Photoshop, and with Topaz plug-ins.  By reprocessing the pictures I brought out more detail in them at least to my eyes and on my computer.  My computer display is calibrated with the color monki display by X-rite.  Never give up on old pictures as new programs come down the line, you can be surprised on what you can do to improve a picture.

This set of photographs were taken at the Viera wetlands, and at Merritt Island national wildlife refuge.  Right now I wish I was down there joining everybody at these locations to photograph all the wonderful wild life that are in those areas.

Anhinga

Northern Pintail

reddish egret fishing

Woodstock

Motteled duck

Great Blue Heron Flying

Blue Winged Teal

Anhinga

American Bittern

Nine-Banded Armadillo

roseate spoonbills in the rain

roseate spoonbills flying

Royal Tern

Tricolored Heron

photographing in the rain can give you great pictures. Just be prepared and have coverings for your camera and lens.  In fact, my last trip to Costa Rica had a number of days with rain and what was still able to get wonderful pics's.


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Thursday's Birding - Salisbury Beach and Parker River National Wildlife Refuge

Today is Thursday, and if you been from my blog, you know, this is the day I usually go birding with my good friend Doug.  I also am trying to photograph what we see.  Our plan today was to travel to see if we could find the Northern Lapwing, since Doug has not ever seen one and needs it for his life list.  We searched the fields in Middleboro and in Bridgewater without any success.  So we changed our itinerary and traveled first to Sharon Massachusetts and found the Ross Goose very easily, it was too far away to obtain any photographs.  Since we were in Sharon, we went up to Moose Hill Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary, since crossbills had been seen there.  We did see some Red Crossbills, as they flew from one spruce tree to another, but again no photographs.  I really wanted some photographs of crossbills and both Doug and I did not have crossbills on a Massachusetts list, so we went up to Salisbury Beach State Reservation, located in Salisbury, Massachusetts, where there have been reports of numerous crossbills.

After we arrived at Salisbury Beach, two birders told us where to go to find the crossbills.  We found a number of White-wing Crossbills, no Red Crossbills were present, however, I did obtain some very decent photographs of the White-wing Crossbills, feeding on the pine-cones.

White-winged Crossbill - female

White-winged Crossbill - male

White-winged Crossbill - male

We continue to bird around Salisbury Beach and got a good number of other species, including Horned Larks and Snow Buntings, which were feeding in the parking lot where grass had pushed through the asphalt.

Horned Lark

Horned Lark

Snow Bunting - female

Since we were in the area.  We then traveled out to Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island.  There we found more Snow Buntings, American Tree Sparrows and an American Bittern among various other species.  The American Bittern was the first sighting for Doug and me in all our birding trips together.

Snow Bunting - female

Snow Bunting - male

American Bittern

It was a long, but fruitful day of both birding and photography.