
This male great egret (left) returned to his nest and mate with a flurry of feathers. When one member of a pair returns to the nest after foraging for food or sticks, typically both members greet each other with open beaks and fluffed up neck feathers, much as humans would greet each other with a handshake and a smile. It’s the egret way. Taken in the Audubon Society’s Smith Oaks Rookery in High Island, Texas with a Nikon D4 and the 800mm f5.6 Nikkor. I usually shoot in aperture preferred mode with the widest possible aperture to force the camera to select the highest possible shutter speed for any given lighting conditions. When capturing birds in action, as with these egrets greeting each other, those lighting conditions can change rapidly.