N 31° 1’12.86″ W 81°26’4.40″ Google Earth Location
It’s a little disturbing to discover that this was taken four-and-a-half years ago, since I wouldn’t have said that much time had passed, but here we are. This came from a inadvertently brief trip to Jekyll Island, Georgia; we’d planned to be down there for a week, hopefully catch a sea turtle nest hatching, but another damn hurricane cut that short. If I remember correctly (old, you know,) the hurricane wasn’t slotted at all to hit the area, but back home at Walkabout Estates instead, and The Girlfriend was concerned about the cats and if we’d lose power back up there, so after a mere day on the island we returned. Yet it was a damn productive day.
This was later afternoon on a beach close to Jekyll Point, the southern end of the island, and the birds had gathered to fish – perhaps enticed by the humans that were both bait-fishing and using a drift net. This great egret (Ardea alba) had snatched a tiny flounder that had been discarded from one such net and was doing an extended juggling session to get it into position to swallow it. It would have been a great candidate for video, but I didn’t have video capability handy then, and in fact was using the Canon 100-300 L lens handheld – video would likely have been too shaky for the focal length. Whether such subjects are to be found dependably there, I cannot say, because we only visited this particular locale the one time, but the entire island seems rife with shorebirds, so on return I will have the tripod in tow and be ready for any such drama.
Of course, when you go (and you will – I am declaring it,) you have to visit the Georgia Sea Turtle Center only a few kilometers away on the island, the best rehab center that I’ve seen. And North Beach, and go sand dollar hunting on the east side beaches, and so on…