Feathery Delight

Today’s post features the Great Egret in breeding plumage. The Great Egret is a wonderful sight, when captured in breeding plumage. A couple of the most notable changes is the green “lores” that develop at the base of the long beak, along with the wonderful, feathers that showcase this bird.

In this top image, the green lores (the area between the eyes and upper beak) are quite evident:

Great Egret in breeding plumage

The delicate, tail feathers are obvious in this next Great Egret:

Great Egret with breeding plumage feathers

These frilly, fancy feathers nearly decimated the Great Egret around 1900, as these birds were hunted for the feathers … a “classy” look to women’s hats. (Note: in the above image, this “butt shot” was intentionally captured, giving the best angle to see the wonderful breeding plumage tail feathers).

In the image below, the green lores are not as striking, but nevertheless indicate breeding season is here:

Great Egret in breeding plumage

Coming up … more birds from the Venice Rookery.

 

Photographic Equipment Used:

  • Canon 7D Mark II body
  • Canon 500mm, f/4 IS lens (top 2 images) and Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-f/5.6 IS lens (bottom image)
  • Bogen 3221 tripod with Wemberly gimbal head (top 2 images) and handheld with IS “On” (bottom image)
  • ISO 1600 (top image), ISO 6400 (middle image), and ISO 800 (bottom image)
  • Aperture f/4 and f/5.6
  • Shutter 1/250 thru 1/3200

 

 

Posted in Bird Photography, Nature Photography, Travel Photography
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