These wooden posts are leftovers from an old dock or walkway at the edge of a rice field pond and the wading birds often perch on them.
The Great Egret was standing still so a slower shutter speed allowed me to capture some images even though the sun had dipped below the tree line and there wasn’t much light in this end of the pond.
Looking in the opposite direction an Alligator was swimming towards a spot to settle for the night.
Shadow and reflection — where does one start and the other end?
The reflections were like a pot of gold in the back corner of the canal that runs along the rice field dike. The dike and canal make a 90 degree turn at this corner, and then the water widens off to the left into a pond. There was a little breeze ruffling the water surface in the more open area.
Taken about a half hour later, this view is towards that same line of trees from a bend in the dike. A few Great Blue Herons have been using the clumps of reeds sticking out from the bank as fishing and sunning spots.
Even though it was well past sunrise the light was dim from a low, not quite fog, haziness.
The pond was still and the Wood Storks were moving slowly, as if slowed down by the moisture in the air.
This Anhinga was performing his drying ritual fairly close to the dike. Hoping he wouldn’t fly I took this from the car, which limited my angle. This was the shadowy end of the pond and I didn’t capture much color, but of course I liked the reflection.
These images were taken in a section of the wildlife management area that I don’t visit often. Until recently you had to climb over fallen trees to get there and the dike is lower, which puts the photographer closer to the water which is good and bad.
Getting a lower prospective and Alligator reflection is good. Being closer to unseen Alligators can scare the &#!% out of a photographer if they move!
Being lower also means less breeze, which much of the year means more mosquitoes. Last week was cooler so there wasn’t much insect activity.
This White Ibis was enjoying the sun and along came a Little Blue Heron.
The Little Blue Heron slowly encroached on the Ibis’ space.
This is the same garden pond taken the same day as yesterday’s Sepia Pond post. Taken from different angles towards the water and a quarter way round the pond, the reflections were much different.
Crossing over the white bridge leads to a path that runs along the side of the rice field canal and eventually all the way around the impoundment.
This is one of the many ponds I pass by at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens. The water behind the statue is a larger pond that was once part of the plantation’s rice fields.
The sepia treatment of the photo helps hide the unattractive floating bits of dead leaves that fall is leaving behind.
One of my favorite ponds is showing what passes for fall color in the South Carolina Low Country: yellow and gold, with very little red to be seen.
This is further down the pond, with my oft-mentioned “skinny tree” just in the right side of the frame. The big birds have moved on, with just a few ducks on the far side of the pond.
This is one of the two birds from yesterday’s post, Shore Birds Wading, as he landed in the marsh inlet. About an hour after sunrise, the sky was completely blue making a nice water color which made up for the dull mud.
It was disappointing that the water stream in front of the bird wasn’t wide enough to get his entire reflection as he touched down.
