These nine Snowy Egret photos are just a fraction of the images I took of a small flock of these snowy, white birds with golden slippers yesterday morning on the marshes of Farmington Bay WMA.
Click on the first photo to start a slide show and to read the captions.
This photo session started with photographing just one Snowy Egret foraging in the waters of the marsh but one by one, and sometimes two by two, other egrets joined the first one. I photographed the egrets as they flew in, foraged, fought and took off. The action was hot and heavy at times and to my dismay some of the fighting photos I took will go into my delete bin because there were other out of focus birds in the frame or one of the fighting egrets was sharply in focus while the other wasn’t. There are a myriad of things that can go wrong when photographing a flock of birds and some of those happened yesterday.
I believe that the green stuff on the water is duckweed but I can’t be certain. What I did find interesting is that the egrets were so white that their reflection on the green vegetation caused a spotlight type of effect below the egrets in some of the photos.
The Snowy egrets will be departing soon because unlike our Great Blue and Black-crowned Herons which are year round residents our Snowy Egrets in northern Utah migrate to warmer climates for the winter.
All of the images were taken with my Nikon D500 with the 500mm VR lens and 1.4x TC attached, ISO 500, f7.1, my shutter speed varied between 1/1600 to 1/2500.
It was a delight to photograph these Snowy Egrets in nice light and cool temps yesterday morning.
Mia
Click here to see more of my Snowy Egret photos plus facts and information about this species.
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These terrific shots are a wonderful study in movement and light. Thanks Mia.
Truly lovely series of shots Mia. Wish I had been there.
Dramatic images of these dynamic egrets!
Great series. These are excellent action shots of the snowy egrets.
Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day…
Gorgeous photos. One day I hope to see a Snowy Egret.
Love your captions, Mia. Needed a good giggle this a.m. Fantastic shots. I think 5 and 8 are my favorites of the series, but you made it pretty difficult to choose. 😃
Awesome pictures! The center one is the best! The detail and posture tell a story. But the one below it brought to my mind the song “Tiptoe through the Tulips! or in this case duckweed.
Incredibly beautiful shots Mia. Gotta love the middle three shots of defensive and “ticked off”
Great shots, beautiful series!
Thanks for sharing.