Sun and Fowl

Saturday was a sunny and breezy cool day so I went to the lake. I figured I would hike around the shore and shoot (photos of) water birds and then hang out for sunset and hope for a cloud or two. This is a good time of year to shoot water fowl around here as this is where a lot of them winter. On a Saturday afternoon, there are usually a lot of people which keeps most of the wildlife in hiding, but the water birds don’t seem to mind the people so much. So, I wandered around the rocky shoreline looking at the dozens of ducks, coots, and geese and tried to be patient enough for them to get into position for a photo. Below is a Canada goose in deep thought, while perched on a rock in the middle of the lake. Probably wondering why people called it a Canada Goose when it spends half its life in the southern US.

Egrets are much more wary of people. They will fly away making an angry, honking sort of call if you get anywhere near them. I knew there was one in the area as I had seen it flying around and I finally saw it from across the cove. I wasn’t going to get a good closer up shot from this distance, so I decided to frame it between a couple of old trees and hopefully make an interesting photo. I tried to focus on the bird, but it was a very long way off for the autofocus to find and I was hand-holding the camera. I probably should have bumped up the shutter-speed a bit more; the image below was shot at 1/1250 of a second with all the image stabilization turn on.

I eventually circled back around and came to a part of the shoreline with bare rocks and decided to just sit and watch the birds and see if they did anything photograph-worthy. An American Coot and a Gadwall Duck (I think) seemed to be floating around together so I spent some time photographing them. Coots aren’t ducks but they seem to like the company of ducks as there were dozens of them swimming around with the various types of ducks I saw. The images below show the American Coot and Gadwall in one photo and a Northern Shoveler in the other. If you wonder why they called it a shoveler, have a look at its beak.

A goose noticed me shooting photos of them, so naturally it swam over to the shore and walked up to me for a closeup. I had a 100-400mm lens with a 2x teleconverter and the image below was taken at the very minimum focus distance. This Canada Goose really wanted a close-up; I did not crop this image.

As the sun got low, I turned my attention to some boulders in the water. I photographed these boulders before and liked the result so I decided to do it again. I used a wide lens and an ND filter mainly because I only have an ND filter for my wide lens. The ND filter blocks a lot of light and allows you to take a very long exposure and thus average or smooth out the water. This gives the lake a glass like appearance and helps show off reflections. It works better on a calm day, which this was not. Aqua and orange tend to contrast well together and I hope I captured that well here. There are some high power lines that go right across this scene and I erased them in Photoshop.

I then waited around the fishing pier until after sunset hoping for some sort of color in the sky, but that was not to be the case. The pier does have some green lights under it which sort of show up in the long exposure.

As I was shooting the above photo, there was a girl or young woman sitting on a rock nearby watching the sunset and singing something. So, that was nice. We all have our way of enjoying natural beauty I suppose.

20 thoughts on “Sun and Fowl”

  1. The water looks so inviting, though I don’t think it would be too warm. Mr Goose wanted to be a star. Nice that you gave him that chance. Great close up!
    Egrets are lovely birds. Too bad they weren’t as obliging as Mr Goose.
    Looks so peaceful. Especially with the pier and setting sun. I can see why the woman would sing as she gazed upon the water.

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  2. You might have looked like a piece of bread, to that goose. I like all the shots, but I think I prefer the sharper photos over the ones with the longer exposures. Except the pier. That one is my favorite, even though it’s a long exposure. Also, I haven’t a clue as to what I’m talking about.

    Maybe that singing woman was trying to be like a bird, and attract a mate. If you had tried to join her in song, you might have hooked up.

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  3. That last shot looks inviting. Flat water isn’t so common here. But it’s an interesting photographic subject.

    I’ve gotten a few, very close up shots of birds over the years. Usually, it was just before being attacked. The geese are notorious. But laying on the ground with the camera, the local springtime robins will walk right up to the lens if given a chance.

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  5. I too have a lot of “nicely framed” images of egrets. Probably wary is healthier for them.

    And the goose. He was probably informing you that the price of admission to the park and its portrait was a bag of corn. Bread is not good for waterfowl as it complicates their digestion and has no nutritional value. All About Birds or Audubon would have more complete info.

    Nice pier image, Jason. The blue sky with bit of sunset doesn’t bother me at all. Simplicity, even a sky, is nice sometimes and makes the pier stand out even more.

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