The past few years we have been fortunate to find several groups of hooded mergansers that picked this area as their winter home. They are small diving ducks that like to feed on little fish, snails, and water insects. When they find a good food source and get into a feeding frenzy, they will dive repeatedly until they are satisfied, or the food source disappears. They will surface only for a moment before diving again. During these periods, they can be a challenge to photograph.
Male Hooded Merganser Surfaces After Diving for Food
Male mergansers like to show off. Their bright white crown feathers are striking when fanned. They will often do water dances for the females and chase other males to show dominance. Unfortunately, they don’t stay here for long. They’re among the first group of ducks to leave in the spring, often by the first of March. But while they’re here, they are enjoyable to watch.
Hooded Merganser Male Rests on a Pond in the Sun
A few more pictures from this journey are featured below. For a larger selection of photos, go to the galleries listed.
Summertime in Florida is generally a quiet time for bird photos. Many of our winter visitors have gone north and won’t return until fall. But there are some species that migrate here for the summer to nest and raise their young. One of those is the beautiful swallow-tailed kite. They travel all the way from South America and stay here from March to August.
Swallow-tailed Kite Soaring to the Right
My good friend and fellow photographer, Art Nadelman, and I, talked about our aspirations for this year and at the top of our list was to capture some good shots of kites. Since swallow-tailed kites spend most of their days in the air, our goal was to get them before they left their morning roosts. The challenge is finding those locations. Kites typically nest and roost in very remote areas near water which makes them inaccessible.
As the breeding season winds down and the return flight back to South America approaches, the kites begin to congregate in large groups in just a few spots around the state. The numbers can reach as many as 1500 birds. The peak time for gathering is usually mid to late July. I’ve included a couple of links to read more about these amazing birds.
This week we had the opportunity to achieve another goal. We went out with a guide that we learned about from a friend. The experience was incredible. We loaded up our gear on his boat before sunrise and headed out on a 4-mile journey through channels and floating water hyacinths to get back to the birds. When we rounded the last of what seemed like endless turns, there at the tops of the giant cypress trees were hundreds of the bright white kites. It was a “WOW” moment!
Our guide worked with us to quietly maneuver the boat into great spots for us to get the best shots. We finally got our photos of swallow-tailed kites on perches. As the sun rose higher, the birds began to awaken and start preening for their day long flights. Eventually a few would test the breezes and search for the thermals that they would ride the rest of the day as they headed out to feed. Then more would take off and begin circling and rising – a process called “kettling” because it resembles stirring a kettle. Occasionally one or more birds would drop down and swoop across the water to get a drink or sometimes just to splash their feathers. This makes for a favorite shot for photographers. Unfortunately, we only had 2 “swoopers” that morning and my only shot was of a bird flying away.
Swallow-tailed Kite Swooping for a Drink
By around 10-o-clock, the trees and skies were empty, and the birds had gone off to feed for the day. According to our guide, they usually start returning a couple of hours before sunset to settle in for the night. In between, they soar all day looking for bugs, lizards, frogs, or small snakes. In a few weeks, they’ll be on their way south again.
I’ve attached some links for more information about these magnificent birds.
I recently had the pleasure of capturing some fun birds in flight images with my neighbor and artist, Jerry Horine. We found an active area where wood storks were moving from their morning roosting spots. Storks are great targets because they tend to slowly glide a long way before landing. I also never realized how the edges of their wings had a green iridescence.
A few pictures from this journey are featured below. For a larger selection of photos, go to the galleries listed.
On Wednesday I had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of another endangered species. The whooping crane was near extinction in the 1940s with fewer than 30 birds alive. Today there are still only about 800 of these beautiful birds remaining in North America. There have been substantial efforts to increase their population over the years, but those efforts have not been a rousing success. A group of non-migratory cranes were introduced to central Florida in the early 1990s. Those releases ended in 2004. We believe the pair of cranes that we photographed may be from the original group. A project to teach cranes to migrate from Wisconsin to Florida using ultralight aircraft began in 2001 but due to numerous failures, the program ended in 2016.
While we were observing the cranes, we witnessed an interesting event. A lone sandhill crane landed next to the pair of whooping cranes. The sandhill was definitely not welcome. The whooping cranes got very agitated and began calling loudly. But the sandhill, which we assumed to be a juvenile, continued to graze. The whooping cranes suddenly chased the sandhill with the male whooping crane grabbing a mouthful of tail feathers from the sandhill. The male cornered the sandhill at the back of the property and then walked away. The sandhill didn’t move for several minutes.
Two Whooping Cranes Warn a Sandhill Crane
The sandhill crane and whooping crane are the only 2 species of cranes in North America so to see both species in the same location was amazing. Seeing them together also revealed how much larger the whooping cranes are than the sandhill cranes.
A few more pictures from this journey are featured below. For a larger selection of photos, go to the galleries listed.
