One of the more conspicuous shorebirds, and one of the loudest too...you can hear them from seemingly a mile away as they fly! This is one of a pair that had a nest going at Fort Desoto (the nest was out of photographic reach for my "short" 400mm lens). As Murphy's Law would have it, this frame, which had the best walking pose and best shell placement on the ground, also had a piece of plastic litter near the raised foot to remove during post processing. It was the only piece of junk on that part of the beach of course (Fort Desoto is generally very clean)!!
Canon 7D + 100-400L @320mm, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/1600s., f/6.3, ISO 400, natural light, handheld, small crop for comp (~85% FF), a couple of darker shells removed from bottom edge, and a plastic piece of junk removed via clone tool. Bill desturated as lots of clipping was going on.
Thanks guys! Ofer, Florida is an amazing place for that...I get more full-frame opportunities there in one day than I do back home in weeks, and with much less trouble to get them close too (no hides, food, audio, or camo)!! The oystercatchers do need more careful approach than most other shorebirds though, but low and slow does it :-)
Well composed and exposed, Daniel. Moving in slowly and down low is definitely the answer to getting close in Florida. Unfortunately, this nest was destroyed in a storm out here but they have renested. We'll see how this nest fares.
awesome shot, Daniel. the raised foot, the blue strip at the top, perfect whites, blacks and red. excellent angle of bird in the frame. Loved everything about this one. really need to get down to florida some day.
American Oystercatcher.
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