Gators as a Rule

It happens nearly every time I'm photographing birds at a wildlife refuge in the Southeast. Someone will pass by, see my camera on a tripod pointed into the sky or toward the top of a tall tree, and ask me if I've seen any alligators.

I'm usually polite and restrain myself from pointing where my camera is and saying, "Well, not up there." Smart ass doesn't always go over well with strangers, especially in the South.

I've found that straightforward factual doesn't necessarily generate much better reactions from the questioner.

"I haven't really been looking for them," I told one young guy at Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. "To be honest, I don't find them all that interesting. They just sit there like logs." The guy scowled and drove off as his pretty girlfriend laughed. I had a feeling she had told him something similar not long before.

But it's true. Sorry, but most of the gators I see are doing what gators do about 99 percent of the time: nothing. In summer, they are as likely as not to lie in the water with little more than the top of their heads protruding from the water, motionless, in a perfect Zen state. On warm days in the cooler seasons, they may haul themselves onto a bank and lie motionless in the sun, soaking up radiation and vitamin D.

So, as a rule, I don't pay much attention to alligators other than  to be sure I'm not about to set my tripod up on top of one, which might cause action of a sort I'd rather not see (and probably wouldn't get a chance to photograph).

But there are exceptions to every rule. One day last summer as I was following the Wildlife Drive that winds along the old rice dikes in Savannah Wildlife Refuge, I came across a genuine spectacle near one of the trunks that levels the water between ponds. At least 20 gators were gathered in an area about half the size of my apartment. A couple of other photographers were already there, snapping away. I could see that some of the gators were baring their teeth, which is a little something at least, so I stopped and grabbed a few images.

Suddenly there was an enormous splash, then another, and another. I looked around to see what was going on. Dozens, maybe hundreds of good-sized striped mullet were swimming around in the same area, occasionally jumping out the water, as mullet like to do. In this case, for many, it was a fatal mistake.

Those normally motionless gators responded to the mullet by displaying blazing quickness, lethal accuracy and chilling gruesomeness. I increased my shutter speed and spent the next 30 minutes capturing some of the best action shots I've ever gotten as gators snatched mullet out of the air or right at the surface and feasted like Thanksgiving.

(See more from this amazing afternoon on the Web site)

Another exception occurred just a few days ago. It's been freakishly warm most of the winter here in the South Carolina Lowcountry, and gators have been basking in the sun every day at the Pinckney Island NWR near Hilton Head. One in particular has been occupying a sand bar in Starr Pond, where water levels are suffering from a lengthy dry spell.

Yesterday, he was up on the bar much closer to the bank where I was trying to get photos of a mystery duck that's been residing in the same area. Violating my own rule, I aimed my lens in his direction and was delighted to see him lying quite still with his jaws agape, displaying, and perhaps airing, his teeth. And what teeth, ivory white lowers, oddly red uppers (stained from his last meal?). After a bit, he turned his head in my direction and let me shoot right at him. I changed position to get him in profile from even closer, and he continued to cooperate until he got bored, closed his mouth and eyes and went back to sleep.

You can judge the photographic results for yourself.

Meanwhile, my rule of thumb will stay intact, but I'll always take a look and see if that log in the water is showing some photogenic animation.

Accurate knowledge vs. Ignorant Bliss

I've been wanting to get this blog going for several months now, but couldn't decide on the topic for my first post. Sort of like writing a novel. You want a brilliant opening line, but "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" and "We were almost to the desert in Barstow when the drugs kicked in" are already taken. Not to mention "Call me Ishmael."

So I decided to take the path of least resistance, pose a question with a mild ethical dilemma. As a photographer, there are more difficult ethical dilemmas than this one, and I'll deal with those later. But this one was also fun.

Last April, I spent a few days photographing wildlife in the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, on Sanibel Island, on Florida's Gulf Coast. Ding Darling is easy to shoot because there is a road through the refuge that provides good views of great bird habitat, with lots of birds habitating there. Near where the one-way road exits the refuge, there was an active osprey nest. On my final visit, I decided to get there about 90 minutes before sunset and set up to shoot the male osprey bringing a fish back to his babies.

There were two chicks in the nest, and the mother was perched in a nearby tree, keeping an eye on things while Dad was out fishing. The babies were nearly ready to fledge. One kept standing on the edge of the nest, flapping his wings just for fun. It was only a matter of time before Dad came home with dinner.

I set up the camera on my tripod with a 400mm lens and a 2x extender. I had to focus manually, and I wanted minimal camera shake, so I locked up the mirror and put a cable release on, and then just waited. And waited.

After about an hour, the chicks started getting excited, and suddenly I head the distinctive osprey cry as Dad approached the nest and announced his arrival. Almost immediately, he was there, flapping his wings to control his landing, and I hit the shutter release and fired off a dozen shots in full burst mode. Perfect timing. I was ecstatic.

I started taking down my gear. It was late, and I was hungry. As I opened the trunk of my car, a car with Minnesota license plates and five middle aged people inside pulled in and parked behind me. They followed the direction my camera was pointing and saw the nest, which was a good 75 yards away, high in a dead tree. One of them pointed his binoculars at the nest and cried out, "Eagle! It's a bald eagle!" The others ooohed and aaaahed, and gazed toward the nest.

And there was my ethical dilemma. What was my obligation here?

I could opt to improve their knowledge and ensure they would come away from the experience smarter and wiser. Or I could keep silent and let them believe they had seen an eagle. Now, as  former journalist, of course, I always feel a certain responsibility to the truth. But as a compassionate human being, I'm also very sympathetic to happiness.

I thought about it for a minute, and I finally decided to keep my mouth shut.

To tell them that what they were looking at was not in fact an eagle but rather another of the most interesting and powerful predators in the avian world, would have ruined their day. Already they were thinking of how to tell their friends back in Mankato about the eagle they saw on Sanibel Island. Who was I, and what was the truth, to be so arrogant as to take that away from them? Let them tell their story, inaccurate though it may be. It would do no harm to them, to me, to the ospreys or to any eagles.

Another way to look at it would be the way the chicks in the nest looked at Dad when they realized he had come home not with the fish they were expecting for dinner, but with a stick. Take a look at the face of the chick looking at Dad. That's how those people from Minnesota would have felt if I'd told them the truth.

I hope they are still telling the story back in Minnesota.