Flying Fish – White Morph Style

As a continuation from my last post, both white morph reddish egrets that we saw caught some very large fish.  A lazy or very smart brown pelican then started to chase the white morphs to scare them into dropping the fish so that he could reap the benefits of the great fishing skills of the egrets.

This white morph apparently fled the scene and kept the fish in tow while flying, which was a first for me to see, let alone photograph.  Luckily he landed fairly close to us with a very nice wing spread.

Got some photos of the pelican getting one of the white morphs to drop his fish later in the morning.  I’ll post those next time.

This was one of my most successful guiding trips to Bolivar Flats.  This was a very rare event to witness/photograph so I’m very pleased that my client got to see this behavior and get some great photos.

Taken with Canon 1DX and Canon 500mm F4 IS II with 1.4X III teleconverter mounted on Skimmer ground pod with Wimberley II gimbal head.

Aperture priority, 1/2500 sec @ F11, ISO 800, evaluative metering, +1/3 exposure compensation

Aperture priority, 1/1600 sec @ F11, ISO 800, evaluative metering, +1/3 exposure compensation

Aperture priority, 1/1600 sec @ F11, ISO 800, evaluative metering, +1/3 exposure compensation