Tag Archives: egret

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Great Egret

January 14, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Great egret in flight above winter landscape, Sacramento Valley

I photographed this great egret in flight at a refuge in the Sacrament Valley recently. Despite being quite common birds, they are not quite easy to photograph as one might think, at least not when in flight. If you are, as I was on this occasion, approaching very slowly in a vehicle, the birds will often let you get quite close. Then they either stay on the ground, perhaps walking away, and providing a less interesting photographic subject, or they suddenly take flight and most often quickly move away from you. And the backsides of egrets in flight are, while not entirely uninteresting, not nearly as interesting as frontal or side views.

This one emerged from some brush along the refuge’s perimeter roadway and flew past my position. I managed to bring the camera up fairly quickly, but it is not an easy thing to go from (slowly) driving a car to stopping the vehicle, raising a camera equipped with a long lens, and almost instantly trying to track and photograph the bird. This is my way of explaining that in a series of perhaps 10-12 rapid images of the bird, only a few provided an appealing combination of the bird in an interesting position, bird in the frame (!), and a background that worked. As I worked on the photograph I felt that it was softer than I had hoped for, but then I realized that I could work with that softness rather than against it, and I came up with a somewhat abstracted view of the beautiful and grace flight of this bird against an amorphous background of distant clouds.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Wings of an Egret

January 21, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An egret spreads its wings as it takes to the air above San Joaquin Valley wetlands

The great egret is an impressive and fascinating bird. They are found in many places here in California — along creeks and drainage ditches, near wetlands, along parts of the seashore. A few years ago there was one that lived at a small pond at a place where I regularly hiked and photographed, and I could count on finding it almost every time I went there. Their striking white appearance draws attention on the winter landscape, where they stand out against darker background and against California’s winter green. They are, perhaps surprisingly for such beautiful and graceful things, skillful hunters.

I first noticed them quite a few years ago in creek beds of urban areas in northern California, and eventually learned that they are found all over the place. They often stand almost completely still, though if you watch them a bit you’ll frequently figure out that they are hunting, observing and then slowly moving toward their prey. Because they seem so still, they look like they would perhaps allow a close approach, but they seem to usually have boundaries — get too close and they take off suddenly, displaying their large and beautiful wings and more than most birds they really do seem to float on the air. Photographing them on the ground isn’t too hard, though getting the in interesting poses can take some patience — but photographing them in flight is quite tricky. They take off suddenly, and I find it hard to be precisely ready for the liftoff when it comes. They tend to fly at very low heights, often flying along ditches and behind plants. And they are most often flying away from you. When I came upon this one I remained in my vehicle but got ready to photograph it if took flight, and when it did I have a tiny moment to fire of a small number of shot, one of which framed the beautiful wings fully spread and against a darker background.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Egret and Heron

January 19, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A great egret and a blue heron in low-level flight

Recently I’ve been thinking about how to make my wildlife photography more efficient. Sometimes I return from a day of photographing birds and other fast-moving critters to find that I have many hundreds or even more than a thousand photographs to sort through. There is a limited supply of pixels in the world, and don’t want to be the one responsible of using them all up. Today it occurred to me that it is wasteful to photograph only a single species in each frame, so I’ve decided to double my efficiency as a photographer and strive to capture two in each shot.

Extracting tongue from cheek… on this trip to photograph San Joaquin Valley migratory birds and other subjects I encountered several of these odd pairings of a single egret and a single heron hanging out together. This was the first pair, and it was quite a surprise. We were creeping along a dirt levee road very slowly in our vehicle, keeping an eye out for interesting birds, and I half expected to see the egret. I had my camera sitting across my lap as I drove, and I probably would have stopped for a(nother) close who of an egret in flight. But right on the heels (tail feathers?) of the egret, a beautiful blue heron followed it across he road — and almost without thinking I quickly grabbed my camera and tracked the two of them as they flew to the left of the vehicle, managing to make a short string of exposures including the two of them together.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Egret on the Hunt

January 18, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An egret hunts in marshland grasses, San Joaquin Valley, California

On this foggy late-December morning I was in this spot mostly looking to photograph sandhill cranes. It seems that the cranes are often a bit shy in the early morning and I often am not able to get too close to them — I try, but they tend to be a bit off in the distance except when they are in flight, and then they typically diverge a bit when they see me. There were lots of cranes on this morning, but they were by the ponds near the more distant trees in this photograph. (If you look closely you can probably spot a few of them.)

Egrets, on the other hand, are often not that far from my route. Out here they tend to be found along creeks and ditches or out in grassy areas where they can hunt, which is what this one was doing. While the egrets are spectacular in flight — with their slow, swooping trajectories and huge wingspans — they may actually be more interesting to watch when they are hunting. They seem to be very careful and very patient hunters, often sneaking up on their prey slowly. Along the way they may stop in some awkward pose, perhaps standing almost still aside from a bit of neck “rocking” or the slow movement of a foot. Then the neck stretches a bit and suddenly the bird stabs its small prey. This bird was hunting in grasses very close to a gravel road, so I remained in my vehicle to photograph it as it looked for its breakfast.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: egret

Great Egret

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Wings of an Egret

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Egret and Heron

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.