Tag Archives: everglades

Great White Heron

Posted by quakerville on


Great White Heron, originally uploaded by QuakerVille.

Via Flickr:
What is unique about this picture? No, it’s not the two rather large alligators watching this bird as he fishes. He’s a Great White Heron, or "white morph" as some call it. When we first came up on him fishing today we just thought it was another American Egret, we saw quite a few today in the Everglades, but with a little closer inspection he looked sort of dirty, skinny and, "where are his beautiful mating feathers"?

Great White Heron

Like a ton of bricks falling on my head I realized that we were observing a Great White Heron, often called the Great Blue Heron White Morph. WoW! How cool!

The two lazy alligators in the view just laid there for hours watching the birds and people from their slippery sloped water way. Other smaller ‘gators in the small water hole in the picture were busy feeding, one alligator was even jumping clear out of the water to impress someone. I had never seen that type of behavior in an alligator before. I tried for a couple hours to record the gator coming clear out of the water, an impressive sight to be sure, but I just could not tell when he was going to leap. The stupid alligator must have thought he was part flying fish that also lived in the adjacent Eco-system and would also occasionally jump clear out of the water. I’ll post a sequence of shots from this afternoon’s encounter with the Great White Heron of South Florida.
Great White Heron

White Head

Check out my blog at jon-mark.com

Cattle Train Due Any Minute

Posted by quakerville on


Cattle Train Due Any Minute, originally uploaded by QuakerVille.

Via Flickr:
Somehow these birds knew that the cattle train was due and that it would be full of cows. Amazing birds!

This is a photo of a group of Cattle Egrets captured while I was exploring a road along the Miami Canal which cuts through the Sugar Cane fields in Palm Beach County, Florida. This area is the main sugar cane producer in the USA and has some wonderful wildlife habitat. My wife Jo and I love to spend time exploring the area from the Everglades north to Lake Okeechobee, where we see all kinds of birds, Raccoon, and Alligators. One trip we counted over 100 ‘Gators sunning themselves along the banks of the water.

Check out my blog at “Jon-Mark’s Blog“

Wildlife Videos, QuakerVille Style

Posted by quakerville on

I love shooting pictures in the Everglades, if you haven’t already figured that out. Over the years I’ve been able to shoot thousands of pictures and capture hundreds of hours of video in many different formats. Before going total HD 16×9 this past summer I created several short videos about wildlife and am recently uploaded them to YouTube for sharing. These short videos are trying to share some of the pictures I’m able to capture in sequences most people have never seen before. My style of capturing wildlife is to shoot extended burst sequences to attempt to capture a greater scope of the subject’s behavior and life. Single shots are nice but I normally shoot 100-400 stills in the same time photographers shoot a dozen. I’ve shot that way ever since I purchased my first  auto winder for my Olympus camera in the 70′s. Depending on the setting and lightening I’ll even shoot long sequences with flash. I have some of those sequences being ready  for later blogs.

South Florida Birds

 If you have a couple of minutes check out South Florida Birds (above) and Great Blues Rookery (below). Great Blues is a series of very high quality still shots with my SLR combined with a short video clip. It’s similar to stop motion animation, with real live wildlife. These are about the last two productions I did in 4 x 3 SD, Everything now is 16 x 9 HD (1080p).  

I hope you enjoy these short views into the life of Great Blue Herons (Tri-Colored too). We expect to start seeing chicks like this in the Rookeries around South Florida soon. Look for more media on them in the near future.

Great Blues in the Rookery

 

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George with the Big Head and Big Teeth

Posted by quakerville on

Via Flickr:
My what big teeth you have.

Sometime during the exploratory trips my wife and I take around Central and South Florida we run into all sizes of Alligators. This big guy was surrounded by other big gators sunning in the warm mid day sunlight. One weekend a few months ago we were exploring a dirt road between Andytown Florida and the Seminole reservation and we counted over 100 ‘gators swimming and sunning along the canals.

Seeing them is one thing but walking around in the muck very close to them is something else. I tend to really respect their space and keep my distance, it’s a good thing we have long lenses on the cameras so we can get these close-up shots.
On the most part these ‘Gators would rather run when they see us but sometime they will hang out and allow some pictures. I don’t fully trust that they will run the other way. I’ve actually seen them pop up and run very fast, mostly in the other direction. One day I’m sure I’ll have to drop my cameras and jump on top of the car in a serious effort to escape being eaten.

Check out my blog for more wildlife shots www.jon-mark.com