Anhinga

Didn't know what it was at first. It had its wings stretch out drying, like a cormorant does, but it was too big to be a cormorant, beak was wrong, and tail feathers way too long. I hadn't seen one before, so I didn't know what it was until I got home to look it up. Of course, also known as water turkey or snakebird.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-G...4/DSC_6157.jpg

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-7...4/DSC_6209.jpg

Good shots. I haven't been able to get that close to the few I have seen.

Phil

Wasn't that close, actually. These are 1-to-1 crops of the frame centers. Second one say 17.8 meters in the EXIF data, and that was clambering through some woods to try to approach. That's also a number I see in an awful lot of my pictures, so I'm inclined to think it's more of a distance threshold than an actual measurement. The first one was farther, but I don't know how much farther. EXIF says infinity.

Next day I saw three of them high, circling the marsh, but they never approached close enough to shoot. They are ungainly-looking in flight, though!