Yesterday was a beautiful day with temps in the 70sF. The forecast was calling for a cold front to come through beginning today and I am happy to report....for once the weather man got it right! I've learned that gators love basking in the sun when it is nice and hot but on cold days, gators submerge themselves to stay out of the cold weather. I suppose the water is warmer for them. In any event, I packed up my camera after lunch and head back to the bridge and horse trail near Highlands Hammock State Park, where I was the other day. Temps were nice and warm and as it happened, I lucked out when I got to the bridge. Three gators were basking in the sun. Two smaller ones and the big one you see in the top photo. Trust me, this bad boy was easily 12-14 feet long and I was extremely thankful that he was on the opposite river bank.
Only one ibis in a tree by the bridge today but he was quite amusing to watch while perched in a nearby tree. As you can see I caught him with his mouth open. Almost like he was trying to tell me something.
This last picture is a crop from the original I took with my 100-400mm lens. I used a tripod for today's pictures but still had to deal with camera shake because of the length of the lens and also a gusty wind. Tried my 1.4x extender with the lens too but I lose the auto focus with my big lens, so that presented some focussing issues. Extender works fine with 70-200 lens though including the AF. Not sure why the extender won't work on both lens.
Yesterday was a beautiful day with temps in the 70sF. The forecast was calling for a cold front to come through beginning today and I am happy to report....for once the weather man got it right! I've learned that gators love basking in the sun when it is nice and hot but on cold days, gators submerge themselves to stay out of the cold weather. I suppose the water is warmer for them. In any event, I packed up my camera after lunch and head back to the bridge and horse trail near Highlands Hammock State Park, where I was the other day. Temps were nice and warm and as it happened, I lucked out when I got to the bridge. Three gators were basking in the sun. Two smaller ones and the big one you see in the top photo. Trust me, this bad boy was easily 12-14 feet long and I was extremely thankful that he was on the opposite river bank.
Only one ibis in a tree by the bridge today but he was quite amusing to watch while perched in a nearby tree. As you can see I caught him with his mouth open. Almost like he was trying to tell me something.
This last picture is a crop from the original I took with my 100-400mm lens. I used a tripod for today's pictures but still had to deal with camera shake because of the length of the lens and also a gusty wind. Tried my 1.4x extender with the lens too but I lose the auto focus with my big lens, so that presented some focussing issues. Extender works fine with 70-200 lens though including the AF. Not sure why the extender won't work on both lens.
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