Non-stop Action on the JAX IPT!

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We had a great first morning at the Jacksonville tern and gull colony with mostly cloudy skies and a northeast wind. Mike DeRosa was using his a1/200-600 rig for the first time and made some outstanding images of Royal Tern in flight carrying fish for the numerous chicks. Many multiple IPT veteran Monte Brown did the same with his Canon R5/100-500 combo. Clemens used his R5 with his Canon 600 II and his 100-400 II for handheld flight. I was able to find a mint Canon 600mm f/4 L IS III lens for Clemens for $9500.00. That after the buyer was offered $6600.00 by one of the big NYC camera stores. Mike made 5700 images on the first morning. Clemens created 250 GBs worth of photos. Monte about 120 GBs of terns and gulls. I was low-hook with 3924 images. I have not yet completed the first edit.

Mike discovered a tiny, dying Royal Tern chick on the open beach. We surmised that it was grabbed by a gull and then dropped. Amazingly, none of the thousands of Laughing Gulls or the few first summer Herring Gulls went after it. We photographed it, and then picked it up and placed it under a wooden palette where it could die in peace. I almost forget to mention: our first morning session lasted until 12:30 pm; we had stayed out for five and one half hours. Two folks needed to take a break so that they could get back to lifting their lenses again!

Today is Tuesday 29 June. The forecast for Jacksonville for this morning is partly to mostly cloudy with a Southeast wind. At 5:33am the sky was totally clear … Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, I hope that you too have a great day

This blog post took more than two hours to prepare and makes 184 consecutive days with a new one. Please remember that if an item — a Delkin flash card, or a tripod head — for example, that is available from B&H and/or Bedfords and is also available in the BAA Online Store, it would be great if you opt to purchase from us. We will match any price. Please remember also to use my B&H affiliate links or to save 3% at Bedfords by using the BIRDSASART discount code at checkout. Doing either often earns you free guides and/or discounts. And doing so always earns my great appreciation.

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New and Better Bedfords Discount Policy!

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Grab a Nikon AF-S Teleconverter TC-14E III and save $14.99. Purchase a Canon EOS R5 and your discount will be $116.97. Purchase a Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens and save a remarkable $389.94! Your Bedford’s purchase no longer needs to be greater than $1,000.00 for you to receive a discount. The more you spend, the more you save.

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Gear Questions and Advice

Too many folks attending BAA IPTs (remember those?) and dozens of photographers whom I see in the field and on BPN, are–out of ignorance–using the wrong gear especially when it comes to tripods and more especially, tripod heads… Please know that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail

This image was created on 27 June 2021 on a beach near Jacksonville, FL. I used the hand held Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS lens (at 600mm) and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. ISO 1000. Exposure determined via Zebras with ISO on the rear dial: 1/1000 sec. at f/6.3 (wide open) in Manual mode. AWB at 5:44pm in the shade on a bright sunny afternoon. Wide/AF-C was active at the moment of exposure and performed perfectly. Click on the image to see a larger version. Image #1: Laughing Gull, large chick

An Impossible Situation …

I knew before we left our AirBnb for our first afternoon at the beach that conditions were going to be pretty much impossible. There was a stiff onshore breeze from the east/northeast with a clear blue sky and the sun headed down in the southwest — classic wind against sun conditions. My number one rule for such situations is to find subjects in the shade. So that is exactly what we did. Scroll down to the explanatory map.

This image was also created on 27 June 2021 on a beach near Jacksonville, FL. Again, I used the hand held Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS lens (at 571mm) and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. ISO 1250. Exposure determined via Zebras with ISO on the rear dial: 1/1600 sec. at f/6.3 (wide open) in Manual mode. AWB at 6:07pm in the shade on a bright sunny afternoon. Wide/AF-C was active at the moment of exposure and performed perfectly. Click on the image to see a larger version. Image #2: Royal Tern with chick

The Colony

A few years ago it was reported that there are about five thousand pairs of Royal Terns at this location along with four thousand pairs of Laughing Gulls and a few dozen nesting Brown Pelicans. Today it seems that the Laughing Gulls far outnumber the royals. There is also a smattering of nesting Sandwich Terns. There are hundreds of terns and gulls in the flight from dawn till dusk; the air is filled with their screams and calls. There are many young gulls on the lower part of the dunes and the beach, but most of the young terns are still atop the dunes. Tomorrow morning we break out the ladder.

Image #3: Situation map

The Beach Map

Note the classic wind against sun conditions. With the wind blowing right at the sun, nearly all of the birds will take off, land, and fly into the wind. Birds on the beach will also face into the wind. That leaves the photographer looking for birds in the shade (X, Y, Z, or anywhere on the completely shaded face of the eight to ten feet tall dune), looking for birds that turn in flight (taking off from A, heading toward B, and then turning to their left and flying to C), or looking for birds returning to the colony (the blue line). Now, not many birds turned left, but there was a pattern. The few that did provided our only chances of photographing birds in fight anywhere down sun angle.

This image was also created on 27 June 2021 on a beach near Jacksonville, FL. Again, I used the hand held Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS lens (at 600mm) and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. ISO 400. Exposure determined via Zebras with ISO on the rear dial: 1/3200 sec. at f/7.1 (wide open) in Manual mode. AWB at 5:18pm on a bright sunny afternoon. Wide/AF-C was active at the moment of exposure and performed perfectly. Click on the image to see a larger version. Image #4: Royal Tern — adult in flight with fish for chick

Success

Thanks to Clemens Van der Werf who first detected the pattern. The bird in Image #4 was one of those that turned to its left after it took flight. Note the huge difference in exposures from the shaded birds to the bird in flight. Our first afternoon session was an exploratory so I headed to the beach with only the a1/200-600. I brought both the 200-600 and the tripod-mounted 600mm f/4 out for our morning session, and even used the 70-200mm f/2.8 lens successfully for flight on that very cloudy morning.

Typos

With all blog posts, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors.