As I said, I did see several birds on Wednesday’s walk. The most unusual around here was this Great Egret that, naturally enough, took off as soon as I pointed a camera at him. I managed to get several shots with much better exposure when he landed a short distance away, but this first one turned out to be my favorite shot:
As I was stalking the egret, I flushed a Harrier Hawk which suddenly flashed upward in front of my face, nearly hitting me with his wings. I suspect he was even more surprised than me that I had walked right up behind him. I missed the first couple of shots, and since I was actually stalking the Egret, I had my camera set to bracket exposures, which works well when photography white birds because it insures that not all the shots are completely washed out. It doesn’t work nearly as well when the bird is flying as rapidly as this harrier was, however. Still, I like this shot a lot, even if the wing tips are blurred because it was slightly underexposed:
