Southwest Florida bird photography (page 4)
Little Estero lagoon (at Fort Myers Beach)

This location ended up being one of the most productive for bird photography of all the areas we covered in southwest Florida.  It is located along the west facing coastline in the Fort Myers Beach region about 4.5 miles southeast from the junction of San Carlos blvd with Estero blvd just after crossing the bridge onto the Fort Myers beach island. The best place to park is at a small strip mall across the street at the corner of Estero blvd and Lenell road just past a Holiday Inn on the coastal side.  There is a small ice cream and coffee shop at the far end of the strip mall with internet access that is a nice location to hang out when waiting for the good light.  The lagoon starts closer to the water side of the Holiday Inn.  Or you can cut across the parking lot for one of the condos just left of the strip mall (with it behind you) to enter the area a little closer to the prime photographic locations. 

If you visit Little Estero lagoon in the middle of the day, you may not notice anything special at this location.  But starting about one hour before sunset, the place becomes magical for bird photography.  We found great, tri-color, and little blue herons, rosette spoonbills, redish, great, and snowy egrets, along with brown pelicans, black and yellow crowned night herons, semi-palmated, snowy, and black-bellied plovers, willets, ruddy turnstones, along with numerous sanderlings.  The prime area will be the mud flats at the mouth of the western most lagoon where birds tend to gather around sunset.  The water here tends to be sheltered by a small strip of mangroves to the north-west, resulting in very calm waters and glassy reflections on the water.  The birds here on these mud flats seem to have a different behavior, exhibiting an unusual tameness around people.  In some cases it was necessary to step back in order to get the entire bird in the frame.  I found I could walk around between the birds, getting within 20 feet, almost treating them like portrait subjects.  As an example in one case, we ended up slowly stalking a rosette spoonbill about 2 hours before sunset to the northern end of the lagoon, with him not letting us get closer than about 100 feet despite wading up to our waist in the muddy lagoon, coming away with just medicore results.  But then about 15 minutes before sunset, the same spoonbill flies in and lands within about 25 feet between myself and Don.  There is something special about these mudflats at this lagoon mouth where the birds view it as some sort of sanctuary and somehow feel protected. We certainly did not make any sudden moves or do anything to change that view.

There are additional lagoons further to the south, but they are less sheltered, so your ability to capture images in calm or glassy waters will be less in the evening hours.  Although we did not visit this location in the morning I suspect they may be more productive then given the sheltering  from the shoreline and some more openings to the water from the east.  Keep in mind that in order to get around in the lagoons, you should be wearing shorts and some sort of water shoes that won't get easily stuck in the mud and pulled off your feet.  To cross some of the lagoon mouths, you may have to wade in water about 2-2.5 feet deep.  

On the second and third visits I ended up using my full framed body on the 500mm f/4 lens (keeping a 1.4x teleconverter in my pocket just in case), and found the reach to be ample without the teleconverter at the north lagoon mouth, while allowing for even better quality results.  Lastly, the row of tall condo buildings on the east side provide a nice light reflector back down to the water.  As a result, if you position your camera angle properly getting some of the more solid walls reflecting into the water, can create a very attractive background for your captured images.  The photography can continue to be good until about 15 minutes after sunset, cranking up the ISO as you go to keep the shutter speed high enough for use on a monopod.  In my experience I have been able to get sharp results as low as 1/100th of second with such a setup if the bird is still.