Wednesday afternoon after work, I had a bunch of errands to do in town and I decided to take the back roads home. I hadn’t been that way in awhile, and I like to see what’s changed along the way. The more leisurely, but slower route paid off big time. That part of our county is very swampy and as I had been driving, I had been noticing a lot of birds all heading in the same direction. Then I rounded a corner and all along one side of the road, in a very swampy area, there were hundreds of birds roosting in the trees. The vast majority of the birds were cattle egrets (Bubulcus ibis), but there were also quite a few white ibis (Eudocimus albus), and even the occasional great egret (Ardea alba). It really was an incredible sight, and when I stopped to take some photos, I couldn’t believe all the noise that the crowd was making. A single photo really couldn’t do the whole scene justice, so I also took several videos, and this one was the one I liked best. Normally, I put music with my videos, but this time I thought people should hear the cacophony of noise that all those birds were making. It really was an amazing sight, and I want to go back out with my tripod and telephoto lens and see if I can get more video and photos of some the individuals and groups.

If you can’t get the video to play (it seems to be haphazard when I test it), you can also see it on my YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/1B3gWS7KoOo