Phil Lanoue Photography

Well the good news is that a few of the spoonbills are still being seen around the marsh area. The bad news is that every time I have seen them in the past several days, they were leaving and going back out into the marsh, way too far off for pictures.

These spoonie shots here were from this afternoon and they were as usual heading away from me. Don’t these dopey birds realize they are not at all being photographer friendly?!? They have a responsibility to come in close, be active and most importantly, look super cute. Instead I get a view of tail feathers as they unceremoniously depart the scene. Very rude. You don’t catch the alligators doing that, they love to stick around in hopes of getting extra screen time.

I’m seriously going to need to speak to these spatula beaks and explain how things are done around here.

Here’s a few more shots from yesterday of our goofy pink visitors. I never get tired of watching these birds and taking photos of their antics, and hope y’all enjoy them as well.

And of course…off in the background of the third photo is, well, you know. 🙂

Well our one lone surprise spoonbill from yesterday was still in the marsh area today, plus he brought friends!

Three additional spoonies were seen this morning at the far back edge of the marsh pond, but by the afternoon only three were spotted but they made a much appreciated visit to the salt marsh during low tide.

As is typical, Mister You Know Who felt compelled to be part of the show if not the star. (well, in his mind he’s always the star)

The three spoonbills spent some time feeding in the salt marsh and made a few short flight hops which provided some fun photo opportunities.

I have a ton of pictures of the spoonbill trio from today (along with the star attraction) which I’ll be posting in the coming days, but for now I thought I would just present a few representative views of what took place this afternoon.

It certainly was great to see the pink visitors especially since we felt so deprived after getting no sightings at all in Sept. But all is forgiven, they are here now, for how long we don’t know, but after all South Carolina has gone through in recent weeks their arrival was a welcome sight indeed!

We went the entire month of Sept. with zero spoonbills in the marsh. July some were here for two days, Aug, five were here a week. That was it, the worst summer for spoonies in a really long time!

So this afternoon we shockingly receive a report that one lone pink spoonbill was spotted far out in the salt marsh. Sure enough, we arrive and there is indeed one young spoonie out there with some egrets and wood storks, but at a good distance out and too far for photos. Plus the bird starts to move rapidly as it’s feeding among the reeds and finally just disappears from view.

An hour goes by and I suddenly see it pop up from out there in the reeds and quickly fly a short distance across the marsh. I banged off a few shots and only managed to get a couple flight pics before he landed again. I was also shooting south across the marsh where normally I’m shooting looking north, that is why people and the walkway on that side as visible in the second shot.

Oh well, it was nice to see the one but couldn’t he have been more cooperative and brought some friends and maybe come in a bit closer. You know, just to be photographer friendly?!

Possibly he will still be around tomorrow but the way this season has gone I strongly doubt he will be. We shall see…