Ding Darling

I'm guessing that it is down to the south west of Florida that all bird go to during the winter in North America. It seems to be crawling with places were birders and photographers gather to watch and take photos of birds. 

One of the most famous places is "Ding Darling". It's an area consisting of water and thick vegetation and trees. The area is easy accessible both on foot, by bike and with a car. You buy a day-pass to the park and drives in along the one way road. That means that you should stop quite often and take your time at each stop. Otherwise you have to drive in to the park ones more, and that is unnecessary waist of time :-)
If you are going to visit the park more than one day, it is actually cheaper to buy a pass that is good for a hole year.
As for many of the Florida parks, the road are a bit higher than the water, but here it is quite easy to get down to water level for those nice eye level photos. There are alligators in the area, but I felt rather safe getting close to the water, keeping one eye in the viewfinder and the other at my surroundings :-)



It is also close to the water were you will encounter the "NoSeeUms". You will feel them before you see them because they have a feisty bite and are really small and hard to see.
I usually don't use mosquito repellent but lather that first day with NoSeeUms I purchased some effective DEET to bring along the forthcoming days. That the eyes were full of tears when driving in the car due to the strong odour was something I had to put up to :-)


Ding Darling has some really big ponds or lakes (even thou it is connected to the sea and is flowing in different directions depending of the tide) so you would bring a heavy telephoto lens such as the 500 mm or bigger if you would like to photograph these pelicans sitting on a sand-bank.


But at the same time, there are a lot of small ponds where you easily can get a shot with smaller lenses Here's a night heron fishing from a branch close to the water.



This green heron came really close to me. So close that I had to call my wife to borrow her compact camera to get a picture since it was sneaking BELOW my 500mm and within 50 cm from my position!



Outside Ding Darling, on the south side of the island called Sanibel, is a small fishing pier and there you can find a lot of birds that are comfortable with humans.
This Egret is shot with a 70mm:


And this tern is shot with a 67mm


Fishermen that stand on the pier is competing with or rather against the pelicans about who will get the fish first. Sometimes it happens that a fisherman gets a pelican as well as a fish on the hook.



The pelican looked to be without harm after this incident and it seemed like it was a quite usual event since no one lifted an eyebrow while the fisherman released the pelican from the hook and took the fish.


One bird that is very common here is the Osprey, much thanks to the good supply of fish of course but also to the fact that there are a lot of man made nesting platforms everywhere in the area.



One moment this one were soaring nice and easy in the wind close to the trees along the shore...



.. and the next moment it dove just in front of me grabbing a twig laying on the sand. I wasn't prepared for that, so the pictures I took were not the sharpest :-)



Unfortunately some clouds always gathered at sunset so those beautiful sunsets with pelicans in silhouette where not to be seen. Well there were one evening, but I was to late and wouldn't make it to the beach, so instead I took this picture straight through the car window, just in pure desperation :-)



I will hopefully have a chance to take them some other time :-)