Spooning by Priyanka Arora

Description

While spending a month photographing wading birds in Florida I spent a lot of time capturing the beautiful iconic Roseate Spoonbill in many different habitats, poses and light. But one thing I wasn’t very happy with was a shot of the bird feeding. Unlike other wading birds like the Egrets and the Herons where you can capture they catching a swallowing their food, the spoonbills keep their bills buried in water sweeping for small fish. So all I ever got for feeding shots was a spoonbill with half its bill in water. Near the tail end of my trip while photographing a group of spoonbills at the Estero Lagoon I noticed this one bird that would sweep its bill in water and then occasionally pull its bill out of water for a quick second and do a head flip. It seemed like everytime it would catch something, this head flip would allow the bird to swallow its catch. And that seemed like a great opportunity. After a few failed attempts, it was quite gratifying to capture this shot. The background was still in shade giving this contrast and allowing for the water droplets to stand out.

Species

Roseate Spoonbill