Went to St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge for New Year's Day - PICTURES!
And we got to see some birds! Unfortunately, it was a very gray day so the lighting wasn't good, but we did add one species to our life list - picture later.
The first few were taken by Mr. csziggy with our now ancient Nikon D70 DSLR with the zoom lens.
This shot shows what much of St. Mark looks like - with an American Egret in the foreground:
Another American egret, slightly different swamp location:
American coots:
This Great Blue Heron was way out in the middle of a large pond and caught this huge frog while we were watching - this is just about the limit of the 300mm zoom on the Nikon:
Compare to this shot I got with my little Fujifilm FinePix S4500 with a 30x zoom which has VR:
The coots above and this coot were just below the viewing stand at the big pond:
All over the pond were large flocks of coots grazing on the dickweed - and there were some ducks hanging out with them. In the middle of this shot are a couple of male green wing teals. This is the first time we've seen them and verified the species!
In the same group of coots as the green wing teal ducks there were some American Wigeons - another first for us!
On the far side of the pond, there was a large group of some kind of herons. Unfortunately, it was really past the ability of our cameras to get any good shots. I think, after looking at the high resolution version of this shot the birds may be immature little blue herons - they are white and then gradually change. In this group, there are a few bird with darker heads and gray on their backs. There is also an alligator.
And of course, here is the lighthouse at St. Marks. In the foreground is a tricolor heron. The solitary bird is a pied billed grebe and the flock of ducks on the spit to the left are black scooters.
Close to the boat ramp we spotted this snowy egret working the bank:
We were all startled when this pied billed grebe popped up right in front of the snowy:
And then he popped right back down - these shots are 6 seconds apart:
The snowy seemed to have been following the progress of the underwater grebe - I bet the grebe was scaring fish towards the shore:
Final shot of the day - a little blue heron:
It's been a long time since we've been birding or taking pictures. Obviously we need practice at both but we had a fun day.
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