I took one hundred and fifty-five photos of two great egrets, over a five-minute period, in the Port of Gold Beach. It’s the first time I could clearly see them catching fish. Besides fish, great egrets eat amphibians, small mammals and reptiles, crustaceans, insects, etc.

I focused on one as it was stalking prey. It alternately walked very slowly or stood still in the shallow water. It now just waited for something below the surface to approach. When one of the fish finally got too close, the great egret plunged its head into the water and, when it pulled it out, it had one in its bill.

What I didn’t realize, until I saw this one in action, is that, once it’s caught a fish, it’ll very patiently dip it back into the water, several times, to clean it off. In this case, it was removing most of the seaweed before it ate it. This can take several minutes and several dips into the water. Then it’ll turn the fish in its bill so it can swallow it whole, head first. Unfortunately, I missed the shot where it swallowed the fish.

That silvery filament, in the next-to-last shot, that looks like fishing line, is thin strands of seaweed with water running down them.

In the fifth photo, you can see the great egret in the background trying to catch something. In the sixth photo, you can see just the seaweed hanging off a fish it had caught.

It’s hunting.

I almost missed this shot because it struck so quickly.

It caught something.

It’s about to clean off its catch.

It will dip its catch back into the water, several times, until it’s satisfied the catch is clean.

While it’s getting ready to swallow, its companion, in the background, is making its own catch.

While it’s turning it’s catch to swallow it head-first, its companion has a mass of seaweed hanging from its own catch and will have to deal with it.

This is the full-frame photo of the cropped image above. I just thought you should see what I was seeing.

This is a series of ten photos of a great egret looking for food, at low tide, in the shallow waters of the Port of Gold Beach.

Like their cousins, the herons, to me these birds are most beautiful when they’re spreading their wings.

Watching this one I thought, several times, it was going to fly off. But all it was doing was “hopping” to a better spot where it thought it might find better prey. Captured by the camera, it looks like some kind of avian dance.

They seem to get seaweed wrapped around their feet, frequently, but they don’t seem to mind it.

There appear to be two egrets staying in the port, here in Gold Beach. I’m not sure whether they’re a mating pair or not.

The other evening I saw them. One was on one side of the port near me, the other was across the water. They were both looking for food.

I know this isn’t going to mean an awful lot to many, but it was getting dark and even though I was using the worst of my low-light lenses, the camera I have, a Canon 5D Mark III, is a fantastic low-light camera. To get the photos of this egret I was shooting at 12,800 ISO, almost unheard of with any other camera, but I still got fairly clean shots. Not the best, mind you, but still pretty good.

I used to have a Canon 60D, but I wasn’t really happy with it. When I heard rumors of a new version in the 5D line, I decided to wait for it. I spent a long time waiting. Then, when it was announced, a little over a year ago, I agonized over whether to buy this or switch over to the Nikon D800. I was only about 60 or 70 percent sure I was making the right decision when I bought the Canon, but in retrospect, I realize it was exactly what I wanted. I’d never get the photos I can get in low light using the Nikon camera that I can get with the Canon 5D Mark III. What I would have gotten with the Nikon would have been a greater pixel density on the sensor which effectively works as a zoom. I may still get another camera with a higher pixel density, but it’s likely to be the Canon 7D Mark II, which has an even higher pixel density than the Nikon D800, so the potential for blowing up the photos will be greater. We’ll see. It all depends on the sales of my novels.

In the meantime, enjoy the bird.

I just love the way this camera functions. This and the following photos are at 12,800 ISO

I thought it was about to take off, but it was really trying to maneuver its way into a good position to catch something.

This was just a nice reflection.

In this one, it’s looking into the water…

…and literally two seconds later it’s pulled something out and is swallowing it. You can still see the water droplets flying through the air. I wish I’d caught it with the burst mode because I may have caught a shot of what it was eating.