Phil Lanoue Photography
I previously worked as a news and sports photographer. Recently I have been enjoying wildlife photography. My approach toward bird photos is similar to sports photography. I attempt to capture mostly action and hopefully a unique perspective.
Big Turnout For The Weekend Convention
We had a quite a large crowd show up this past weekend for the wading bird convention.
Although only egrets, blue herons and wood storks were invited, a few white pelicans managed to crash the affair.
Everyone still seemed to get along fine and I heard rave reviews for the seafood buffet that was served at the event.
Happy Trio
We had a huge meeting in the marsh this afternoon (more on that coming up tomorrow) and this fine looking trio of white pelicans were involved for a while. But they soon decided to float off and check out the other side of the pond because the grass is always greener, or the fish are tastier; whichever.
Anyway on their way by…they stopped and posed for a brief moment in front of a couple of fluffed egrets that were bracing themselves against a brisk wind.
The pelicans then tightened up their formation and continued on along their journey.
High Overhead Circle
We had a bald eagle come gliding in over the marsh this afternoon. I originally was alerted to the eagle’s presence by a great blue heron that I saw looking straight up at something. I looked up as well and quickly realized what the heron was watching. A group of ducks in the pond saw the eagle as well and they all burst up in a huge panic.
But the eagle was just doing a slow, wide and high circle checking things out, I never saw him dive down for anything and in fact he eventually headed over to the nest tree and sat their alone. He even came close to having a mid air collision with a vulture.
There has been some concern because we have not seen two eagles together in the nest area in some time now. The female should be on schedule to drop her eggs but we don’t know for sure what’s going on. We seriously hope someone has not lost a mate…
Everybody Gets One!
On a recent grey, cloudy afternoon over at the salt marsh, the birds were still out and active, plus it seemed like pretty much everyone caught themselves a fish.
It actually almost looked like the same fish. Each bird had a fish that was around the same size, except for maybe the largest bird which was the blue heron, he had maybe the smallest catch of the group.
That was unusual for the great blues, they generally seem to ignore the smaller fish and wait for something substantial to come along. But, I guess this guy was hungry.
The Big Guys Were In
This afternoon we had a small group of American White Pelicans floating around out in the middle of the marsh pond area.
Suddenly one of the pelicans decided they all must immediately fly over to the other side of the pond.
So the group made the journey, but after arriving they started floating back in the direction they just came from.
It’s possible they were watching cormorants and diving ducks feeding and decided they needed to go where all the best fish must be located.
I think the big birds did get some fish, but one place looks (at least to me) as good as another.
Happy New Year!
Wishing you all a healthy happy 2016 from me and the whole crowd over at the marsh.
A special greeting from our pal Mr. A. 🙂
Just Taking A Look Around
Here’s two more of the eagle from Tue. afternoon when he was swooping around the salt marsh area keeping on eye on his domain.
Busy Morning For The Eagle
I was going to post more pictures from yesterday afternoon but then… the eagle showed up again this morning and I had to go with these.
The bald was first spotted standing around and relaxing in one of his favorite pine trees but the quiet didn’t last long.
Very soon the eagle was off flying out toward the marsh pond area because it was apparently breakfast time. I guess he wasn’t too hungry because he came flying back in toward the salt marsh with a small fish tucked under his tail.
He landed on a branch in a different pine and proceeded to dine on his dainty meal. After breakfast was over he took off again but this time landed out among the reeds in the salt marsh for unknown reasons. He was moving around out there a lot too but no one knew what he was up to. There wasn’t any water right in that spot and he didn’t appear to have grabbed any type of bird or animal.
Quickly however, the purpose became clear when he popped up out of the marsh with a bunch of dried reeds grasped in his talons. He was gathering up nest material! The eagle did one more swoop around then headed out toward the nest at the far back edge of the marsh.
Quite a morning for the bird…
Phil Lanoue Photography 