Birds at Pepper Park

A couple weeks ago I went to Pepper Park with my mother, who painted there. I took some photos of birds. There were lots of royal terns and a few other birds. These were taken with my telephoto lens.

There were a few sandpipers poking around the Sargassum weed that had washed up on shore. I took a number of photos that didn't turn out very well because they were between me and the sun. This photo was taken with the sun to my back, so it came out nice.

Royal terns. They look a lot like cartoon characters.

A dove near the parking lot.

My mom painting. You can see what she painted here.

Little Blue Heron 2

Here's that little blue heron again. It was slowly walking back and forth between two docks looking for food. I used my telephoto lens for this photo, and I waited underneath one of the docks for it to walk by.

Barnacle

Barnacles are strange creatures. They're actually crustaceans, like crabs and lobsters. They live a sessile existence in adulthood, but earlier in their life cycle, they actually exist as free-swimming, one-eyed larva, similar in appearance to a copepod. They molt several times as they grow, like most crustaceans. As adults, barnacles feed using their legs, called cirri. That's what you see here. I took several photos before I could get a clear photo of the cirri.

Another weird thing about barnacles is that they are hermaphrodites, having both male and female organs, but they rarely reproduce through self-fertilization. They also don't sexually reproduce the way coral does, by releasing eggs and sperm into the water. Instead, barnacles mate through the use of an extremely long, prehensile penis. Barnacles may have the largest ratio of penis size to body size in the animal kingdom. Eventually, the fertilized eggs hatch, and they live within the shell of their parent for a while, until they molt for the first time and go off to look for a place to develop further and eventually attach themselves to something.

I took this photo shortly after I got my 50mm prime lens. If you're interested in a DSLR, you should definitely get that lens. It takes nice sharp photos, it's cheap, and it's compact. This picture isn't really representative of its capabilities though, as it was taken through water, causing the blurriness.

Sandpipers at the Indian River

Sandpipers are a common sight at beaches around Florida and elsewhere. These small birds congregate in flocks of a few dozen individuals and use their sensitive bills to feels around for small crustaceans underneath the sand's surface. If approached, they will walk away from you as a group, until they get scared and take off, at which point the entire flock will fly together to some nearby place, usually not more than a few dozen yards away.

I took these photos with my macro lens. A telephoto would have been a better choice, but I wasn't expecting to take any good photos of birds so I didn't have it with me.