Sorry little bittern, I don’t make the rules!

As a younger man I might have spent New Year’s Day watching football for eight hours, but in 2010 I kicked off the new year at Ridgefield with eight hours of watching bitterns. I did venture around to other parts of the auto tour but spent most of the day sitting still at South Quigley Lake with the bitterns. I love photographing in the rain and was fortunate enough to get this straight-on portrait of one bittern before a quick shake sent the drops on its head flying. It paid me little heed as it hunted for voles and salamanders a few feet below me as it wandered up and down the shoreline and in and out of the marsh.

I had the lens aperture set to f/16 to keep as much sharpness as I could from the beak back to the eyes and water drops. Thanks to the low light, small aperture, and extension tubes for close focus, even at ISO 3200 my shutter speed was a woeful 1/25th of a second, even with image stabilization and a beanbag for support I didn’t have high hopes I’d get a good image with such a long telephoto lens.

This time I got lucky.