Southwest Florida bird photography (page 7)
Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary

This is similar to 6 Mile Cypress Slough but on a larger scale with more diversity in the terrain and birds. Myself and Don spent about half a day out here on the way down to Naples from Fort Myers. The site is run by the National Audubon Society with a nice visitor center and well maintained boardwalk over 2 miles in length. They charge a $10 fee per person to enter, but give a discount if you happen to have your Audubon membership card on you. Given the extensive area of this place and length of the boardwalk, it is worth the price of admission.

As for the bird photography experience, there were quite a few woodland birds including red bellied and pileated woodpeckers, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, various warblers, gray catbirds, numerous red shouldered hawks including some that allowed us to get very close, along with some wading birds such as white ibis and great egrets. For some of these woodland birds, they tend to congregate in certain areas where there is more food to be found. I noticed this in areas where the plants had some type of berries for them to eat.  When you find one of these gathering locations it is typical for them to fly off when you approach. But if you linger, and remain relatively motionless, and allow for other people to pass, the small birds will often return, allowing for better photographic opportunities. In general this strategy tends to work better than trying to chase down or follow a bird for capturing photographs.

In one situation I heard the noise of a small bird down in the reeds nearby, and at first could not spot it.  But then after watching more carefully I found a warbler with its head stuck in a slit of a reed and unable to free itself. It was about 15 feet off the boardwalk in the middle of a flooded area, and I was unable to reach it or grab the reed, even after trying with my extended monopod. We also encountered a red shouldered hawk perched on a tree just 10 feet above the boardwalk, that then dived to the ground nearby, capturing some type of large green insect, a couple of inches in length, and then proceeding to eat it in front of us.

The boardwalk is quite long, so give yourself at least 2-3 hours to cover this area. Given the density of the trees and smallness of most of the birds, you are better off with a more hand carry lens on a cropped body. On this trip we ended up lugging both setups, which was very fatiguing.  It is difficult to track the smaller birds with the 500s, but on some occasions I did have success, and so perhaps it was worth the pain?