This past Monday, my friend Art Nadelman and I made a visit to Bahia Beach Nature Preserve in Ruskin. The preserve is less than a mile from Tampa Bay and has become one of favorite winter spots for waterfowl. We often see many other species of water birds like herons, egrets, gulls and shorebirds. Occasionally we also see some beautiful roseate spoonbills. We don’t typically go to this spot during the summer because of mosquitoes. But we had another motivation for making the trip.
Last fall Canon released a new zoom lens that received rave reviews in testing. Both of us ordered the lens back in November when it was first available to ship. It only took 6 months for us to get them. No need to comment here. We felt like this would be a great place to put the lens through a good test because the preserve is an easy walk and generally provides a lot of good photo opportunities, especially for birds in flight.
The day turned out to be a blast. We arrived at sunrise to clear skies with lower humidity and a nice breeze. Better yet … no mosquitoes! The recent rains expanded the water areas and brought in a lot of birds. The hiking trail isn’t much more than a half mile long and it meanders along a large pond on the entire east side of the trail and two other ponds along the west side. We started off by walking to the very end of the path so we could position the sun behind our backs as we reversed and headed toward the park entrance.
The birds were very active. We logged about 40 species, but the number of birds was impressive. I’ve written about reddish egrets in the past. Many photographers and birders head to Fort De Soto Park near St. Petersburg to see them. There are usually 1 or 2 fishing in the tidal pools. We rarely find them inland and, on this day, we had 4 feeding around us! There was also a flock of 19 spoonbills that didn’t seem to mind us being near them. Another of my favorite shorebirds is the black skimmer. It’s fun to watch them glide over the top of the water with their bottom beak skimming just under the surface for fish. There were close to 20 fishing in the ponds. We would normally only see those numbers on the coast but not inland. The waters were alive with birds. At times the shoreline seemed like a white mass with all the snowy egrets and great egrets. It was a feeding frenzy. There were numerous species of terns diving into the water for fish along with several types of gulls. It was amazing to see the activity.
In addition to the aerial displays, there were also other shorebirds. Black-necked stilts were everywhere. They’re funny-looking birds with their very long pink legs. As we finally got back near the park entrance, we came across a killdeer family that had 4 little fuzzy chicks running through the weeds. It was a fantastic morning.
If you’re wondering about the new lens, it performed beautifully. Both of us agreed, after reviewing hundreds of photos, that the lens is very impressive. I’m still not sure I can let Canon off the hook for the wait, but the results are exciting. We’ll see how it holds up in the long run.
For more information about Bahia Beach Nature Preserve, follow the link below.
A few more pictures from this journey are featured below. For a larger selection of photos, please visit the galleries listed.
