Mischievous Macaw

I wish I could say that this photo was taken on some grand, wild adventure. But alas, I met this incredibly talkative and cheeky macaw at the Naples Zoo in Florida. It wasn’t the first time we had met; I grew up visiting this zoo and there was always an assortment of rescued birds who called the zoo home.

When you first enter the zoo, you’re met with a beautiful assortment of exotic plants, towering trees, and of course, the macaws and other rescue birds. They all sit in the first enclosure and greet the new arrivals with various calls and eerily realistic human voices.

The beautiful bird that is the subject of these pictures is one of the macaws that could imitate human voices, and he met me with a scratchy, “hello!” Because he had immediately caught my attention, I walked over to him and the other birds.

This macaw’s feathers were a brilliant blue, green, and yellow. The white and black feathers around him perfectly contrasted the bright colors of his body. But what intrigued me the most were his eyes. They were intelligent, and they told a story. I couldn’t stop staring at those eyes and the way that they met my gaze with such confidence. This bird was not afraid of anything, let alone a smiling photographer.

Hearing another animal call out to you is a cause for laughter and awe, so I smiled and greeted him back. Once he saw that he had gotten my attention, he began to bob his head up and down and was definitely sizing me up. Maybe he liked that I was wearing a brightly colored dress that day, or maybe he was excited that I had stopped to greet him, unlike nearly every other visitor who walked right by to get to the alligator enclosure.

Regardless, the two of us interacted for a few minutes. Once he was more comfortable with my presence, he started giving me these sideways glances, puffing up his feathers and continued to dance along the branch of his one tree. This is when I pulled out my camera in an attempt to capture his outgoing, yet mischievous personality.

I had my Canon Rebel T6 with me that day, and I was using my 300mn lens in the hope to get some long-distance shots. Like most photographers, I try to use my manual settings whenever I can. But with the sun so bright, it was hard to get the settings exactly right. I did settle on an aperture of 16 and made sure my ISO only let in natural light. There definitely was not a need to add my own.

I’m sure you’ve heard that you need to take at least 100 pictures to get a good one (yes, I am completely aware of this exaggeration and yet believe it to be true in many cases), but I only took 2 pictures of this photogenic bird and both of them were winners.

As a photographer, snapping the perfect picture on the first try is like winning the lottery. It rarely ever happens, but when it does, it makes you feel so giddy and motivates you to take more. And honestly, this picture was nearly perfect. When I went to edit it, all I needed to do was up the contrast slightly and add just a dash of saturation to accurately capture the brilliance of this bird’s feathers. Otherwise, the picture itself was a natural masterpiece.

If you are interested in the picture, I do have it listed on my Etsy Shop as a digital download. The link below will take you directly to the link. Thank you!

Cheeky Macaw from Eternally Embellish