While our trip to Florida was more about spending time with family, I had a goal to see and photograph an endangered Florida Scrub Jay.  These birds only reside in scrub forest in central Florida and their habitat is being lost at an very high rate due to urban sprawl.  That said, there are several preserves set aside to protect scrub jay habitat.  I did a lot of research prior to going to Florida and decided on one area to try to photograph this beautiful jay.  It didn’t take long for them to show up and they’re quite used to people as they’re handled often by researchers.  if you look closely, you can see this bird has some research bands on his leg. I typically don’t fly with my 500mm lens due to size, so I used a Tamron 150-600mm lens for my bird photography in Florida.  While it doesn’t perform as well in low light, it did quite well for the type of photography I was doing on the mornings when I was able to get out and look for birds.