Glossy Ibis behaviour portraits

The Glossy Ibis that I blogged on Sunday had shown very well even holding its ground at distances of around six metres so I returned to Croft Pascoe PM yesterday looking to capture some behaviour images.

The bird was still showing well but unfortunately the sun wasn't but I settled down for a three hour shoot and snapped away at this amazingly avid feeder which had never stopped feeding for a total of the five hours that I had watched it over the two days.

It was happy to feed in the shallow dramatically reduced water level of the pool or it seemed just as happy foraging through the muddy margins where I watched it predating on small frogs, small fish and worms almost continuously,

With careful field skills and a very cooperative bird working distances were eventually reduced to four to five metres at which time the bird stopped feeding for a while to complete some serious preening,    At one stag it even took a short siesta right in front of me!!

Siesta over,   This amazing Ibis treated me to a waking Yawn at 3.5 metres minimum focal distance and then it was off on the feed all over again and was still chomping away when I left.            

                                                                            Happy Days !!

Glossy Ibis at Croft Pascoe

With reports of Glossy Ibis sightings at Croft Pascoe for the last three days and a rare sunny break in the weather mid -afternoon I decided to pop over to the Lizard and check it out,

Well the bird was there sure enough but the sun had gone back in hiding behind the clouds making it difficult to bring out the Ibis plumage colour range

In the first almost silhouette image above taken at around fifty metres I settled for a black and white reflection,

An hour later with careful field skills and a bit of help from the bird I had that distance down to seven metres and was able to remove my I.7 Teleconverter to achieve max aperture of F4 which helped with the plumage details in poor light.

I was unsure about the dotted halo from eye to eye at first but now believe this to be the markings of a breeding bird and for an older bird I have to say it was extremely tolerant of my presense in this remote location while it was constantly busy feeding.

A very interesting encounter with a perhaps once or twice a year reported visitor in our area !!

I dropped into Windmill farm on the way home to check out reports of pregnant adders'

I found one in the car parking area but was unsure if the obvious central bulge was the result of pregnancy or the swallowing or recent prey ??