It was a warm summer morning in February and I went to the city park at sunrise with my camera – this is usually a good time and place to find birds as they love the pond. I guess the only people goofy enough to go the pond at sunrise on a Saturday morning are hopeful wildlife photographers and hopeful fishermen. I’m not sure what kind of luck the fisherman in the kayak was having, but I found a lot of great white egrets as well as the flock of American Coots seen with the fisherman below.

As soon as I arrived, a flock of great white egrets came swooping in over the pond. Fortunately I was ready to go with the bird focus tracking and high frame-rate. Below you can see a couple of shots of the egrets flying with the morning sun just above the horizon behind me. The brightness of the sky changed a bit as I panned tracking the egret over the pond.

The flock was making for some trees across the pond to perch in. Apparently there are choice branches as there was quite a bit of controversy while they sorted out the seating arrangements. They parked there for a while and I walked around the park looking for other birds.

On the opposite side of the park, next to a tree filled with very loud red-winged black birds, I found one of the egrets in the top of another tree and it let me get close enough to get a few photos before I spooked it and it bolted. All of these photos were shot at high ISO to get the shutter speed I needed so I used the noise correction in Lightroom to remove the graininess and sharpen them up a bit.

And that was my egretful morning at the park. I have shot a lot of great white egrets as they are common in these parts, so they make for good practice. They are skittish birds and it is a challenge to get close enough for good shots.

I sat on the park bench with my coffee thermos for a while looking out over the pond, but didn’t see much else to shoot and post about. Thanks for reading.