The February Florida Spoonbill tour is now over and there are two more to go with one open spot in March and two open spots in April. Overall, it was a success! The first morning was notably exceptional. See below the beautiful breeding colors.

Roseate Spoonbill with full breeding colors – Tampa Bay Spoonbill Rookery, Florida
ISO 1000 | f/8 | 1/3200 sec. | Manual mode | AI servo rear focusing
This photograph was created with the Canon 600mm f/4 L IS II USM lens (review) with a 2.0x extender and the Canon EOS 1DX mark II.

The breeding colors are quite amazing at this location! Judge for yourself. In the photograph above, I aimed at creating a striking bird in the forefront, with a small group in the distance to give a nice environmental feel.

The first morning was very special. We started with great pre-sunrise conditions for blurs, followed by excellent bird activity with up to thirty birds on the shore. There were lots of take offs, landings, bankings and even squabbles! To top it all, the group enjoyed a delightful bathing session, ending with a very long wing flapping moment.

Roseate Spoonbill flapping its wings - Photography tour
Roseate Spoonbill flapping its wings – Tampa Bay Spoonbill Rookery, Florida
ISO 1250 | f/8 | 1/4000 sec. | Manual mode | AI servo rear focusing
This photograph was created with the Canon 600mm f/4 L IS II USM lens (review) with a 2.0x extender and the Canon EOS 1DX mark II.

Be sure to be ready for wings flapping after a bird bathes. Note that I increased the shutter speed to 1/4000 to freeze the wings. By now, you will have noticed that I do not see high ISO as a sin since I have developed top notch de-noising techniques.

Roseate Spoonbills banking above the mangrove trees – Tampa Bay Spoonbill Rookery, Florida
ISO 1600 | f/5.6 | 1/2000 sec. | Manual mode | AI servo rear focusing
This photograph was created with the Canon 600mm f/4 L IS II USM lens (review) with a 1.4x extender and the Canon EOS 1DX mark II.

We also enjoyed a lot of landings, preceded by the birds banking above the mangrove trees. As Karma would have it, the afternoon was quite calm besides a nice Osprey encounter and the following morning had good bird activity, but quite some fog to deal with. Note that fog is very rare, but no one can guarantee weather conditions…

Florida Spoonbills Photography Tour – $1,290

March 30th-31st 2019 / limit 6 people – 1 opening

April 27th-28th 2019 / limit 6 people – 2 openings

Florida Spoonbills Photography Workshop

2 working lunches and 3 boat rides to the absolute best rookery to photograph spoonbills with breeding colors. $250 deposit. Send me an email at steven@stevenbirdphotography.com

Florida Ospreys Photography Tour – $1,490

March 28th-29th 2020 / limit 4 people – 3 openings

Florida Osprey Photography Tour

3 boat rides on a pristine cypress trees lake and 2 working lunch sessions with lunch included. $300 deposit. Send me an email at steven@stevenbirdphotography.com

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Comments (2)

  1. Rick Beldegreen

    Reply

    Nice images! Just curious, since I’ll be joining you in April. Are your images with a 600 and 2x converter full frame or how much have they been cropped? Just trying to figure out my equipment and how close you get

    • Steven Blandin

      Reply

      Thank you Rick! We try not to get closer than 50 feet from the birds, as per the Audubon recommendation for this protected area. To give you an idea, first image is about 3,950 pixels on the longest side; image number 2 is about 3,500 pixels on the longest side (crop from an horizontal frame); third image is 3,600 pixels on the longest side. Does this help?

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