Up at 2:39 am; Everything Comes Together...
I had the alarm set for 3:30 am today, July 4, but woke with a start almost an hour earlier thinking that I had left my 400 DO on the Hooptie Deux the previous Tuesday. I ran to the SUV only to see the bag sitting safely in my vehicle. But I was up for good. 78 miles to the dock listening to a good CD book and then met James Shadle and Son Blake. Before 6:30 am we were in the water behind our tripods. It felt like a sauna even before the sun came over the mangroves. By 9:15 am we were packed up and headed for home. By then it felt like a sauna on high. With water on the coals. It had been a truly wondrous morning, one of the best I have enjoyed at Alafia. The only negative of the day was a misguied couple tooling around on a jet ski. Can you imagine bringing a jet ski to a large wading bird rookery? Well, you will not believe this but the guy was there to photograph the birds.... Truly stunning.
IAC this just-fledgled Roseate Spoonbill was photographed with the Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens, the 1.4X II TC, and the EOS-1D MIII. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1/3 stop: 1/400 sec. at f/10 set manually. (Minor clean-up on the base of the bill.)
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