Ardeola ralloides
This one is from the past weekend, in Doñana National Park (Huelva, Spain) one of my favourite heron species but, unfortunately, the plumage of this guy was in not perfect condition. Hope you like and feel free to made your critics;)
Nikon D2X AFS Nikkor 300VR+1,4XTC 1/2000, f5,6 ISO320 handheld from car
Very nice image Juan. Love this bird very much. They are so beautiful. I guess the plumage is not so perfect due to the age of birds. This should be in 2nd calendar year :)
Szimi
Agree with Szimi,very nice bird!!!
I really like the pose and the details
Thank you guys for the comments. The birds are in full breeding plumage right now but I think this one got some problems with someone... and he lost the beautiful B/W long feathers of the nape. Unfortunately this is the best BG I obtained in that day. Many other photographs of beautifull adults with perfect plumage and with red legs/blue bill/green face but not in the best BG or angle :(
Great photo anyway!
HI again,
I love this rallhäger as we call it in Swedish. A very nice portrait.
I also photographed it at something like this, stretching his neck, that was down in the stone age, four years ago, with slide film (can we believe that we did that?). Was it close to the centre, I photographed it just 100 meter after the centre. Before a road going to the right.
When I see your photos I realy want to go back. I love that region/district. I'll see if I can. Or is it too late for the birds this year?
Warm greetings
Brutus
Last edited by Brutus Ostling; 05-13-2008 at 03:35 PM.
Hi Brutus, I am glad that you like this rallhäger (garcilla cangrejera in spanish = little crab heron). Usually this is not a very easy species to photograph in Spain without a hide but in some times of the year is really tame. This spring is uncommon in the south of Spain because we are having rainfalls and the birds are having a great time. This guy posed about half an hour while we were at the car (three persons!) about 10 m away (I am not sure but we were really close). There was almost one squacco on each wood post and lots of cooperative purple herons, cattle egrets and grey heron. We have a lot of opportunities to photograph glossy ibis (but the light was not veru nice for flight photography that day) and many other species like sacred ibis, whiskered and common tern, great reed warbler, corn bunting, rock trush (yes, a female rock trush!!), short toe eagle, flamingo, pochard, crested grebe, and many more species. White storks are breeding near and you have a large colony on which you can took almost “macro” images of the birds because they are very tame.Originally Posted by Brutus Ostling
One of my friends posted a nice image of squacco in full breeding plumage in the spanish forum at BPN (http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=11767) so I recommend to you have a look.
I cannot assure to you that you will have luck with the birds but I think that you are in time right now but you know that birds are very unpredictable. If you decide to go just let me know and I will give you detailed information on how to arrive a the sweet spots. I went two weekends ago and there were a lot of birders and photographers enjoying the bird explotion.
Juan
Great picture! A lot of details and a good sharpnes.
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