Before doing the Downtown Venice Art Festival this year I stopped by the Venice Rookery on Friday night. Last year while doing the Venice show I had people come in my booth and tell me about the Venice Rookery being I do a lot of Florida birds . They said it’s right here in town, just down a few miles on US 41. The first few times people told me about it I thought yeah right, it’s right here in town? Then after the 5th or 6th person telling me about it I thought maybe I need to check it out. So before the show this year I made the time to see it. It’s quite a place to photograph birds, lots of great egrets, black crowned night herons, anhingas and great blue herons nesting and hundreds of ibis roost for the night. So I extended my Motel 6 reservation to spend a few days after the show to shoot the rookery. Here’s some of the images…
This is a great egret with it’s green breeding colors bringing in some nesting material.
Two immature great blue herons add their squawks to the noisy little rookery, a small island in a pond at the Venice Rookery.
What I was really after was an image of the dancing great egrets displaying their breeding plumage and this is as good of an image as I got. I don’t know why it took me two days to realize it, but I was really under lensed for the way I would have liked to shot them. My 300 just wasn’t enough to get in as tight as I normally like to be. But this image will have to do until I can return with a longer lens- and that could be a few years before I can justify the price tag of a 500 or 600!
This anhinga was on the far shore of the pond at sunrise and made for a nice silhouette.
This great egret was feeing at Corkscrew down by Naples. I wrapped up my shooting for this trip back at Corkscrew. It was great to get out there one last time before doing the Bonita National Art Festival and heading home for this year. Although the Venice Rookery has a lot of birds and is very accessible, I still like the setting at Corkscrew a lot better. The Venice Rookery is a small park surrounded by homes and in my opinion can’t compete with the splendor of Corkscrew’s 2 mile boardwalk through an amazing cypress strand.
Wow! Amazing. These photos make me want to take pictures. The Great Egret with the twig has amazing light and composition. Amazing light!!! Again, amongst many things, knowing when and where the good light is and pursuing it is half the work. Your photos is a testament of your hard work, years of experience and talent. And, finally, I am writing this note not as your wife but as someone who likes your photos. Remember, I have several in my office and I love them. They relax me. They remind me that beyond the ugly, 70s style walls of the office there is nature and its limitless beauty.