On the Florida peninsula, the sun seems to rise just a few miles off the eastern shore, so close you could almost touch it. It quickly ascends, filling the day with light and awakening the birdlife. By March the days are already springlike and growing longer. There is no bad time to visit Florida for bird photography, but March has always been the preferred time for me and virtually all the Van Os trip leaders to visit. Bald cypress trees that have taken a winter break and shed their green needles of last summer are awakening with the vibrant growth of a new season.
With spring well underway, bird activity increases, and rookeries fill with nesting wading birds driven by the age-old necessity to reproduce. This is when courtship displays begin, and the process of mating, nest building, egg laying, and chick rearing takes place en masse.
I am happy to report that this spring’s photo tours were everything you would expect from Florida’s prolific birdlife. Each year’s visit here is a little different regarding the timing of the nesting season, and I can say this season played out well for all three of our photo groups. The big draw for bird photographers here is not only the diversity of birds, like waterfowl, waders, songbirds, and a collection of raptors.
Along with all these birds come all the breeding performances that coincide with spring here. With breeding season spanning the month of March, each group of photographers had opportunities to photograph many of the birds in courtship displays at the same time; some birds were engaged in nest building while some birds were already chick rearing. There just seemed to be no shortage of action at the bird rookeries we chose for this year’s photography visits.
I know it’s difficult to pick a favorite photographic opportunity from the tour. Some photographers favored the first marsh we visited, where wading birds like herons and egrets stalked fish just a few meters from our lenses. Other favorites continued to be the boat rides that brought us close to weathered cypress trees where osprey nested in absurd numbers and barred owls lurked behind Spanish moss-draped limbs. One could also get great practice photographing bright pink roseate spoonbills as they glided past our comfortable craft, working feverishly at preparing their nests for the arrival of this year’s chicks.
This trip has one of the classic photo safaris finishes as we tied the trips up with three visits to a wetland where we could immerse ourselves photographically and comfortably walk and photograph a myriad of Florida’s breeding birds at eye level, sometimes only a few feet away.
With each trip being a bit different from the last and days filled with photo opportunities, I have come to count on the beauty and diversity of Florida’s birds during the breeding season to enthrall our photo travelers while keeping them happily clicking away. All this happens in the lengthening days of spring, with each day closing where the sun seems to set just a few miles offshore of Florida’s west coast, dropping timelessly into the languid waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
