Big Cypress in the Rain

We get a lot of rain in Florida. Usually, it's the type of rain that just dumps out of the sky for a few minutes and then passes, but occassionally we get a day that's just grey and wet for hours and refuses to let up. Kind of like Scotland except, you know, warm.

Little blue heron (adult)

Juvenile little blue heron

A woodpecker

A murder log (American alligator)

 
Still, I've always really liked rainy days for taking wildlife photos. The colours are richer, the days aren't so dazzlingly bright, and the animals all just look that bit more scunnered about everything!

Killdeer crossing

A black vulture

A mockingbird

Possibly a small warbler

These photos are from all the way back in January, and mark the first in a series of batches I'll be posting now I've had some free time to clear a bit of my backlog! I hope you enjoy them. As always, you can click on each image to see a larger version.

A juvenile blue heron.

Wildlife in the Wind and Rain

The change from summer to autumn has not been subtle this year. Over the course of the last week we've gone from warm, sunny summery days to ... well, today! As always, please click on the images to see them properly.

I can't imagine why no-one was sitting on that bench...

Still, bad weather can make for some cool conditions to take photographs in. A lot of wildlife won't come out when the weather is really bad, but one of the nice things about photographing coastal and marine wildlife is that a little bit of wind and rain doesn't tend to faze them very much!

Breaking waves hammering the seawall at Troon.

So despite the forecast, today we headed south of Glasgow to check out the beaches at Troon (one of my regular spots), Irvine and Ardrossan and see what we could spot. The tides shouldn't have been that great for getting close to the birds (it was low water around lunchtime), but the horrible weather had forced plenty of them high up the shore so we had some nice opportunities. Along the shore we had turnstones and redshanks:

Turnstone on the beach at Troon

Redshank on the shore

I was hoping to find eider ducks sheltering from the weather at the harbour, but they were apparently elsewhere today. There were eight grey seals hanging around though:

Grey seals in the fishing harbour

Of course, it was at this point in proceedings that my trusty 7D + 300mm F4L + 1.4x T.C. combination reached the limits of its weather-sealing abilities and stopped working. No screen, no autofocus, no buttons... Oops. Fortunately a towel dry and a few minutes on the car heater seemed to fix it so hopefully there's no lasting damage. At least it was freshwater for a change too! Of course, that wasn't the only thing I did to the camera today...

After Troon we headed further up the coast to Irvine just in time for the sun to break through for a few minutes.

The beach at Irvine

Having spotted a couple of eider ducks, I decided to test my new walking shoes and climb down the seawall to get down to the beach for a closer view. Neither the boots nor the photo worked particularly well unfortunately and I have a couple of rather large new dents in the camera (and my arm). It still works though, so happy days!

Another couple of war wounds to add to the collection. I suspect I'll never, ever be able to sell this camera second hand. Ever. 

The eider duck photos turned out to be pretty boring in the end, but fortunately a curlew came to the rescue and stood in the sea spray and sunshine for a little while:

A curlew in the waves

After this set I decided I'd left enough blood and camera metal on the shore at Irvine for one day and we headed back to Glasgow via Ardrossan and Largs past some more promising looking beaches which I will check out next time I have a free day.

So all in all it was a pretty successful day out really! Nothing broken, nothing (very) flooded and a few decent photos to show for it. I might wrap the camera in a plastic bag next time right enough.

A weekend on the east coast

Last weekend we were invited to my husband's cousin's wedding (congratulations Scott & Kirsten!) up in St. Andrews on the east coast of Scotland. Since it's a good couple of hours drive away from us and Kev had the day off anyway we decided to make a trip of it and stay for a moderately long weekend's break. Obviously, I had my camera with me and although St. Andrews is primarily known for its long, sandy (and windy!) beaches, there are a few rocky parts where a fair amount of wildlife seemed to be congregating, maybe to take advantage of the better feeding under the seaweeds and around the rocks.

It was a cold and windy day when we headed down to the waterfront for a wander around, but despite being dressed in my loudest and extremely lime green snowboarding  jacket, we were still able to get pretty close to a lot of the birds thanks to a handy sea-wall and their obvious habituation to people on the beaches.

A cormorant drying off its wings in the wind and (intermittent) sunshine

And another cormorant flying past.

Carrion crows, like hooded crows are common scavengers around the coasts.

 

A well camouflaged curlew hunting amongst the seaweeds.

A rather grumpy looking heron waiting to hunt. It wasn't having much luck with the fishing that we saw!

 

A little redshank hunting in the seaweeds as well. He was less well camouflaged!

Interestingly, all these birds could be seen quite easily from the shore, despite large numbers of tourists wandering around, so it seems to be a pretty good place for a bit of photography if you're passing by. You just need to make sure and avoid the crowds:

I have no idea if this rock is special in some way or not, but in the half-hour we were hanging around here we watched two busloads of people climb up it, take photos of the sea and then head off again!

On the Sunday, feeling a little fragile after the wedding festivities we decided to take the longer, coastal route home to Glasgow, stopping in a couple of towns on the way. Neither of us were feeling particularly patient or stealthy, but the weather was being wonderfully changeable and making some lovely light which I love for photography, so we gave the wildlife a miss and simply enjoyed the views!

Lobster cottage; though the observant will notice that is in fact a spider crab skeleton!

An ancient advertisement in the village of Crail.

The harbour at Crail.

 

And the harbour at St. Monans.

 

A break in the clouds illuminated the Isle of May for a few seconds before the rain closed back in again.

In other exciting photography-related news, I am now the proud owner of a Canon G12 compact camera and underwater housing which I have bought simply because I miss being able to take a camera with me underwater whenever I want to! With the amount of SCUBA training I do through the year with the university, it's just not safe to carry the big camera with me most of the time, but hopefully this compact will let me have my cake and eat it to some extent. We shall see how it performs in the murky depths of Loch Fyne this weekend!

EDIT: Or not. Seems this is the time of year for everyone to get sick, so the underwater camera tests will have to wait a little longer.