In Need of Better Lenses

I miss out on a lot of wildlife photos because I mainly photograph wildlife from a great distance. You just either cannot, or should not get very close to many types of animal in their natural habitat. For instance, all of the photos that I have taken of grizzly bears have been from a great distance. And since I don't have a really effective telephoto lens, all of my shots of griz have been grainy.

Here are a couple of examples of frustrating instances of trying to get photos of, first, an alligator catching and eating a prey animal; and a strange-looking osprey who had just caught a large fish. In both cases I'd have been able to get some decent detail if only I'd had a much better telephoto lens. In each case, the distance from which I was taking the photos was from well over 100 meters. I just couldn't capture exactly what I needed to see.

Yes, I am currently shopping for some better telephoto lenses. I have a couple picked out and will probably buy them over the next few months. Even a halfway decent lens costs more than I paid for my new camera. So the expense is somewhat daunting. But if I'm going to take better photos of wild animals, I must have a couple of good lenses.

I noticed this alligator in the Upper Myakka Lake because she had risen to the surface and was struggling to swallow something. From the distance I was at (a lake tour boat) I couldn't see what she was trying to eat. At first I thought it was a cormorant or anhinga. But once I got to shore and expanded the photo I could see that it was a very primitive looking fish (almost something like a lobefin!) that I assume is a catfish of some sort?

It was interesting how the alligator bowed its body by lifting its head and tail out of the water to position the large fish for swallowing. (By then the gator had changed position so that I was seeing the opposite side of its head..)

The next photo is of an unusual looking osprey that I watched as it splashed into the lake to catch a fish (an invasive talapia). As I'd watched the osprey in flight there was nothing strange about the raptor at all. It flew normally and dived into the water and came back up moving naturally. But when I looked at the first image I got there seemed to be something trailing from the left wing. Had it picked up some water weed in the lake? Was it a loose wing feather? It just looked very weird. 

It was only in taking a good look at the second photo in the series that I saw that this osprey has a left wing that is much, much longer than the right wing. So that was the culprit of the weirdness of the first image. Whatever the source of the difference in lengths of the bird's wings, it obviously has no influence on its ability to fly or to hunt. But it does make me wonder how this happened. Was it due to an injury as a tiny nestling? Result of a mutation? Is this common in ospreys?

These pair of instances, taken quite actually just minutes apart in the wildlife-rich Myakka River State Park, illustrated to me that I must buy a couple of new telephoto lenses. Until I buy such lenses, my wildlife photography will continue to be limited.