Brown Booby

For a couple days I have been hearing about a Brown Booby being spotted at White Lake just north of Blairstown, New Jersey off of County Rd 521. On Monday 30 July 2012 I decided to take the 75 mile drive to this lake and see the bird for myself. I brought my Canon eos60D camera and my Sigma 150-500mm lens. When I arrived at parking area, there were about 7-8 people all watching the bird with spotting scopes. A gentleman allowed me to view the Brown Booby through his spotting scope and I saw the Brown Booby sitting out about 100-150yards away on an old broken down wooden dock. I noticed in the spotting scope what looked to be an abandoned building on top of hill from the wooden dock. I asked a couple locals about the building and they did say it was abandoned. At this point a big smile came upon my face because I knew i was going hiking in the woods to photograph the Brown Booby. So, i got in my car a drove about a 1/4 mile up the road and parked my car in a parking area for state gamelands and proceeded to walk up an access road which led to this abandoned building and wooden dock. When I finally arrived at the dock i was only about 50ft away from the Brown Booby and to my surprise this bird was not spooked, nervous etc... The Brown Booby seemed to be very calm, sitting patiently on the edge of the dock. The only draw back to being in that spot at the time of day I was there was the bad lighting conditions. I tried to move around to have the sun at my back but the shrubs & thickets were so heavy that it was impossible to get into a better position to photograph the Brown Booby.

The equipment and settings i used for this photograph is a Canon EOS 60D body, Sigma 150-500mm lens, Shutter speed 1/640s, focal length 500mm, F/6.3, ISO 500