Bethune Beach Park
Bethune Beach ParkBethune Beach Park, located on the east coast of Florida in New Smyrna Beach, is a scenic destination known for its tranquil atmosphere and natural beauty. This park offers visitors access to pristine sandy shores, where they can enjoy swimming, sunbathing, and beachcombing along the Atlantic Ocean. Across A-1-AT, the park is also home to diverse wildlife, making it a popular spot for birdwatching and nature photography. The little Intercoastal bay on the west side of the park is a magnet for manatee and dolphin especially when the waters begin to warm up in March.
Manatee with calf - Nikon Z8 with Z100-400mm lens at 125 mm 1/1000 sec, f/4.8, ISO 560
Although manatee are warm blooded mammals, they surprisingly have very little fat on their huge bodies and therefore do not tolerate cold water temperatures. During the winter months, hundreds of manatees can be found congregating at warm springs where the water is a constant 70 degrees such as are found in Blue Springs Park in Orange City, Florida. Once the warmer weather heats up the rivers and estuaries across Florida, however, the manatees will spread out and spend the spring, summer, and fall months in the warmer fresh and brackish waters. In Bethune Beach Park, the water has heated up to that tolerable level (at least 68 degrees) and the manatees can regularly be seen feeding on the seagrass of the lagoon. These are some big vegans! When I first saw the “footprints” of the manatee seen above, I knew I had to train the camera on that direction and prefocus to that distance. A “Footprint” is a large flat circle of water created by the manatee’s huge tail. Manatees are mammals as stated before and need to surface to grab a lungful of air. But they don’t stay close to the surface for long, so you’ve got to be ready to grab a shot or two. Surprisingly, when the manatee surfaced, I found she had a little calf with her…kind of a manatee photo-op BOGO!
The birdlife was pretty sparse except for a nearby Red-bellied woodpecker and a communal group of Common grackles. Grackles are quite commonplace here in Florida, but you have to look carefully to see which of the two common species you have spotted. In Florida, this is an easy call if you can see their eyes. If you see a black iris in the bird’s eye, you are looking at a “Boat-tailed” grackle (remember the two “B”s - black eye =Boat-tail). Golden eyes, however mean this is a Common grackle such as is pictured in the photo to the left.
The only other bird of note this morning was the Great blue heron which was positioned at the little bay’s end. Often, especially in the afternoon hours, dolphin will come into the bay in small groups of two or three and will herd the fish into the shallow end of the bay. I will attempt to photograph this event later during our stay as it is quite a display of cooperation among the species. As the small fish are pushed into the shallows, they become easy prey not just for the dolphin but also for other fish eating creatures like this heron. Unfortunately for the heron, he was here too early for the feast today and will have to wait for the dolphin to show up later in the day.
Tech tip - when photographing objects beneath the surface of the water, especially on a sunny day, it will be of significant value to use a Polarizing filter to cut the glare and make the target more visible. In this case, I cut the glare in post-processing by using the “Dehaze” and “Clarity” sliders in Lightroom Classic. Use of the filter or post processing will make a huge difference in what shows up in your photograph.
