![\"yellow-crowned](\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/YCNH-2.jpg\")
N 26\u00b027’10.73″ W 82\u00b0 7’33.94″<\/strong> Google Earth location<\/a><\/p>\n
Accuracy? I sincerely doubt it. But I was somewhere along Indigo Trail in JN “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island, Florida when I took these frames, and that’s close enough, especially since this bird is unlikely to still be there 28 years later. I was on my first dedicated photography trip alone, though my second visit to Ding Darling – I’d visited the year before with friends – and was hiking the walking trail looking for critters. A then-unknown bird species was calling out across the marshes and, after spotting it in the treetop, I stalked it carefully, pausing every handful of meters to take another frame in the certainty that it would notice me soon and take flight. Yet it did not, and within a couple of minutes I was directly underneath it – there was zero chance that I had successfully maneuvered so close without it being aware of my presence, so apparently it just didn’t care. After securing some nice frames, I brashly imitated its call.<\/p>\n
And then after a moment or three, the bird looked away again, dismissing me as inconsequential. I have to note that this was taken at 260mm, since that’s the longest lens I had at the time, and while cropped, I was only a handful of meters from the bird’s position, quite close as far as wildlife photography goes – the first frame at top is uncropped and taken while I was still further off. But my proximity was no matter – the bird had more important things to tend to.<\/p>\n This one’s for Mr Bugg, who is likely to be pretty damn close to this spot in about a week or so. N 26\u00b027’10.73″ W 82\u00b0 7’33.94″ Google Earth location Accuracy? I sincerely doubt it. But I was somewhere along Indigo Trail in JN “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island, Florida when I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[95,3089,4162,3271,70,7425],"class_list":["post-35607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-florida","tag-jn-ding-darling-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-nyctanassa-violacea","tag-sanibel-island","tag-yellow-crowned-night-heron","tag-you-call-that-an-imitation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"yellow-crowned](\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/YCNH-MasterBlaster.jpg\")
And this is what I got in return:<\/strong> the yellow-crowned night heron (Nyctanassa violacea<\/em>) fixed me with an evil glare and held it, which I have to say is the only time I’ve been so honored. It’s easy to imagine what was going through the bird’s head and virtually guaranteed to be absolutely wrong;<\/strong> the best I can say is that I either did more than a passing imitation of its calls, which demanded close examination to determine that there was no actual interloper on its territory, or (more likely) I was only close enough that it was confused as to what was making this inept attempt. Regardless, I took advantage of this with delight.<\/p>\n![\"yellow-crowned](\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/YCNH-3.jpg\")
I want to point out that the species does not have an orange stripe along its jaw at all;<\/strong> that’s simply a leaf in the way, visible in the second image too. What’s funny about this is, I still consider Ding Darling to be a great place for photos, but when looking for examples as proof, I have nowhere near as many frames as I do of other locales. Truth be told, I’ve been there four times, I believe, and two of them were remarkably unproductive;<\/strong> the last visit with The Girlfriend (in 2009, damn) has so few frames I could easily argue that it’s a poor choice. Yet my first fartistic gator<\/a> shot came from here, not half an hour before these, plus some raccoons<\/a>, plus some fartistic lizards<\/a>, so, hit-or-miss, but when it’s a hit, it’s a big one. That probably says enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"