This is a snowy egret, one of 15 species of egrets and herons in Costa Rica. It can be distinguished by its white body, black bill and feet, and touch of yellow next to its bill. It slowly stalks its prey, mostly small fish, crabs, and insects, in shallow water and on land. They can be 64 cm (25 in) in height and have a wingspan of 1 meter, or 3.3 feet.Costa Rica is described as "Nirvana for birders" by the Eyewitness Travel Guide edition for Costa Rica. There are 830 differend species of birds in tiny Costa Rica, more than the 700 in the USA and Canada combined.
I don't profess to be a birder. I like to watch (and photograph) birds, but I am not an expert. Fortunately, I have several reference books to help me with some of the information I am posting about the wildlife and plants of Costa Rica.
Thats a good picture. I always get the tail as the bird flys away when I try to get a pic.
ReplyDeleteJim,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your compliment about the photo, but I should confess that I have taken plenty of lousy pictures of birds as well.
A drawback, in my experience, of the new cameras when shooting birds is that in the auto focus mode the camera will often focus on the bushes or trees in the background and not on the bird because the bird often accupies too small a portion of the area in the viewfinder.
Thank heavens for digital cameras and the free opportunity to click and, if unsuccessful, erase.
Gorgeous bird, excellent image. Ty a manual focus. 's really worth it.
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