I was photographing from a ground blind in the late afternoon/early evening hours of Jan. 12th in Lamar, TX hoping to photograph some Sandhill or Whooping Cranes at fairly close distance. (Cranes, both Sandhill and Whooping, have been drawn to several deer feeders in Lamar, TX over the past couple years given the poor food availability during the drought of 2011-2012). Unfortunately, no cranes landed in the yard in front of my this afternoon, but not all was lost. The resident Great Blue Heron that hangs around a draw there along the property line put on a nice little feeding show. The heron caught a nice sized snake along the draw, and I managed to capture a nice series of images as the heron downed this snake. Quite a treat, both for the heron and myself to photograph!
CORRECTION: I was informed that this was not even a snake at all, but a legless lizard -- Slender Glass Lizard
This was an extremely productive day of shooting -- just a
s I was hoping for. The day started off with a sunrise/morning shoot at
Brazos Bend SP. Local wildlife photographer Chris Elliot met me in Alvin at
530am, and we set out for the park before sunrise. It started off foggy an
d kind of slow, but once the sun finally broke through, we started firing a
way on the shutters. Among the birds were many alligators, a couple as l
ong as 12 feet! First time I have seen an alligator let alone photograph on
e! Numerous herons/egrets, ibis, teal, and occasionally other ducks woul
d occupy much of our time. For me, the White Ibis was the best bird I go
t real good images of along with the Tri-colored Heron as these birds consi
dered quite rare in Kansas. We concluded this shoot around 11am, and Chris
dropped me off at my motel in Alvin. I then took off for the Bolivar Flats.
I arrived there at 230pm and photographed there until sunset. I was tho
roughly impressed with Bolivar Flats. The sky was clean of clouds so I h
ad excellent light to work with. Among the birds was a huge raft of Amer
ican White Pelican and gobs of plovers and sandpipers. I got some great
shots of Snowy Plover using the new ground pod I bought which gets you down
to darn near ground level. The best images were probably of the Reddish Eg
ret. I saw and photographed both the dark morph and the white morph variety
of this species. Both of these birds behaved in nearly identical fashio
n while foraging. They tend to dance around aimlessly going after a fish.
Whatever works, I guess, as I did manage to get a few frames of the dark
morph with a very nice-sized meal All in all, I was very pleased with the
shoot! I will upload images later.
I started the day in Corsicana, TX and made the roughly 3 hour drive to
Houston in the morning. I met up with my friends Mitch and Candice for
lunch -- great mexican restaurant close to where the live called Lupe
Tortilla for some fantastic fajitas and margaritas. After parting ways with
them, I got a hold of a local photographer Chris Elliot whom I met on the
Naturescape.Net forum a couple months back. Since it was already
mid-afternoon, I did not have time to go down to Bolivar Flats for a late
afternoon shoot. Instead, on the suggestion of Chris since it was late and
close, I went to the Kemah boardwalk to check out the Laughing Gulls and
Brown Pelicans. This would be a great place to get some good in-flights of
Brown Pelicans, but the weather was really poor with flat, uninteresting
light due to the clouds and drizzle. I knew ahead of time that this day
was not going to be good for photography, so I did not make any real plans
for this afternoon anyway. I spent maybe 45 minutes there at the Kemah
Boardwalk before heading to Alvin where I will be staying while up here for
a couple days. I posted three images here from the Kemah Boardwalk
Here is the latest NWS forecast for Galveston and Rockport-Aransas. The days highlighted in Yellow are the days I will be in those respective areas. The Whooping Crane shoot on Monday and Tuesday look excellent!! Very thankful for this forecast!
