Sat Feb 21, 2009

[brandon]

Instead of getting up super early to shoot today I decided to sleep in and hopefully catch some nice afternoon light........But it was hit and miss. Clouds started to move in and it wasn't the greatest. Everytime I've been out taking pictures of waterfowl I always see them do this thing where they sort of push themselves out of the water and fluff their wings then rest back in the water again......I'm not sure if theyre just stretching or what but I've wanted pictures of that behaviour for a while. It's not as easy as it seems though.......when there's 20 ducks in front of you, it's hard to predict which one will do it still try and keep the other ducks out of the frame. So today I worked on just watching the ducks and learning what sort of stuff they did before they did their little stretch dance. The little bit of study time paid off and you'll see that in a few of the pics below.......enjoy

 

Female Pintail walking on water.......

 

Drake Wigeon

 

Drake Mallard

 

Drake Mallard/Pintail hybrid

 

Same mallard/pintail hybrid doing some cleaning

 

Mallard

 

I'm not 100% sure what kind of birds these are....

 

Female Northern Harrier......Instead of trying to get too close for a profile type pic I stayed back and kept more in the scene.......such as the mountainous backdrop

[bushart]

Looks great---definetely like the moving shots better.

 

Bushart

[centerpin_drift]

right on brandon, thanks for sharing. the pictures of the mallard/pintail hybrid are wicked, we actually have a couple sitting on a warm hole in my home town and i never figured out what they were till now. keep them comming, i wait regularly to see your waterfowl shots now.

 

mike

[walleyejigger]

amazing pictures, you have true talent

[pameladallaire]

Great shots as usual Brandon! Don't you get sick of being at the point where we have nothing to criticize? LOL

 

I LOVE the splashing shot.

 

Pam