Female Aninga

One of my favorite birds is the Anhinga, aka Water Turkey and Snake Bird. I often see males of the species, but for some reason, I rarely see females. I find females particularly attractive in that their coloration is much more interesting than the males. I was on a bicycle training ride one day when I encountered this female anhinga overlooking the water from this bridge. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera, but after coming by a couple of times over about a half hour period and noticing that she was still there, I raced home on my bicycle, grabbed my camera, jumped in the car and headed back to the location of the bird. Fortunately, she was still there and I got wonderful series of shots. Although this one is far from the best technically of the series, I post this one because of two things that made it particularly interesting, 1) She has her mouth open and 2) She is giving her threat display by extending the pouch in her lower throat. I guess she was tired of my presence and let me know about it and soon flew off. Ideally, I would have liked to have framed the whole bird, but this is the way it was shot.

Shot at 400mm, f18 (I can't recall why I had such a narrow aperture and high ISO), 1/640, ISO 4000.