TomKal foto

Quite amazing and a unique bird because of its massive, as for a bird of the family Ardeidae, beak. It happened to me twice that I met boat-billed heron. The first occasion was pretty funny, when I think of it now from today’s perspective of writing this text in a safe place. Our guide drove us to the edge of the wetland mangrove forest. He warned us that mosquitoes in a large number could be found there and we had better protect ourselves (long sleeves, insect repellents). We had to move quietly, because the birds were skittish and sat in the crowns of not very high trees on the floodplain areas. Prepared in such a way, concentrated, in peace and quiet we went through a marshy terrain, where small water holes could be seen among areas of forest and ponds connected to each other through narrow isthmus. And in this silence, suddenly  quite a loud sound of water splash could be heard. I asked the guide what it was? His answer was - a crocodile. There were only mosquitoes that were expected to be here, I said. But this was a small one, there were no sense talking about it - he said. In such circumstances we managed to take first images of boat-billed herons, in quite a hard light and having problems with framing related to lush vegetation. The second encounter with those birds was definitely better, both in terms of light and distance conditions I was more lucky. We were on the boat and could see two boat-billed herons in the coastal vegetation. They allowed us to swim so close that with the lenses of 600 I could capture the bird in the full. A instability of the boat was a little disturbing (continuous movement), but our guide quite smoothly maneuvered the boat  and tried very hard doing his best, what was more important. It resulted in much better pictures than those of the first meeting, and the color of the sunset had an influence on the effect as well.