The exposures are very tough when you work in manual mode as you need to avoid over-exposure when the bird or birds are set against the brightest areas of the sky, those right next to the setting sun. I did get some great sunset stuff on Wednesday evening and will share two of those along with my new sunrise/sunset exposure methodology with you there. There was some nice sunset color on Thursday evening but with the wind from the west the birds coming to roost were landing away from me so I never even set up my lens. It has a rather pointed top and I am wondering if the birds will take to it … Jim and I headed down to the lake at about 1pm and we erected the largest, tallest-ever perch. My appointment was for the next day, Friday 🙁 I arrived about 15 minutes early only to learn that I was 24 hours and 15 minutes early. We stopped at Mickey D’s for breakfast and headed back to Lake Wales for my appointment with TJ. I used my SONY 200-600 with the a9 ii while my brand new Canon rig remains in the product boxes on the dining room table … In previous years there had always been dozens of the huge, beautiful, easy-to-approach pelicans resting on the bulkheads around the lake … Things were better at my back-up morning lake with lots of Lesser Scaup and a few Ring-necked drakes as well. Jim drove me to Lakeland where my first morning stop had zero American White Pelicans. I had my teeth cleaned at 7am yesterday and was done by 7:22am.

Giga topaz