Saturday, May 3, 2008

shoebill - murchison falls national park, uganda

3 comments:

  1. i had to go back because i forgot to add the "birds" label to this post. easy to overlook that fact. shoebills are very, very unique. as in, there is nothing like them.

    this was certainly the closest i've been to a shoebill in the wild (there are three at the uganda wildlife education center, but that's cheating).

    since we got into birding, it has probably been at the top of the list. they are rare and have very specific habitat, so it was super-lucky to get this close.

    not much to say about the photo. when something like this comes along, you don't want to get buck fever (minnesotans will know what that means) and forget that your camera's exposure is set for the backlit bird on a branch or something like that, fire off a bunch of shots and then 30 seconds later after it flies off, check the LCD and realize that you over-exposed everything by two stops. good form to take a quick photo and check the LCD and histogram to make sure you're in the ballpark. that said, i made exactly the mistake i'm describing with my first 5 photos of the lion cubs. d'oh.

    look at that, i did have much to say about the photo.

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  2. Rather prehistoric looking creature! How big are they? It's hard to tell from this shot.

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  3. they're pretty big. standing maybe five feet tall? definitely bigger than a great blue heron, to put it in a MN bird perspective.

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