Bird and bird nesting season is in full swing in Florida. The temperatures are rising close to late spring time temperatures. Some of the best places for birding close to Orlando are Viera Wetlands, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and not to be overlooked, Gatorland. I managed to hit two of them this past weekend. The trip to MINWR was not planned but made sense to visit there on the way home from Cocoa Beach where we shot the sunrise. The Cocoa Beach pier is a favorite place of mine for sunrise and now with the sun rising directly east, it seemed like a good time to visit. The sunrise was not spectacular but you can't always have gorgeous skies. Unfortunately the forgotten item of the day was my camera remote for shooting long exposures. I just settled for nothing longer than 30 seconds. One more lesson learned, don't stand close to or under the pier while the maintenance people are blowing the sand off. Before I knew it, myself and my camera had sand on it. Looks like I will be cleaning it good before I shoot again.
After breakfast, we headed off to MINWR and to Bio Lab Road to see what was going on over there. It started out slow in spotting birds, but as we drove south on the road the masses of white pelicans revealed themselves. There were too many to even count. Among the pelicans were also roseate spoonbills, great white egrets, snowy egrets, ibis, glossy ibis and probably some other species. It was fun watching as they one by one took off and moved to the south. This was a good thing, as they were now positioned much closer to where we were. I worked on shooting mostly flight shots, but couldn't resist getting some shots of the large group.
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