Vacation Bible School Part 3: The Ducks

I'm glad that it is October for only one reason: Crystal Lake State Park is closed. The reason I'm glad about this is simply because I am confessing that we fed the ducks. The park rangers are gone now and won't harangue us! There were two duck families at the beach on the day that we went for Vacation Bible School. They were so engaging (even though the mother ducks tried to prevent their ducklings from mingling with people!) that we couldn’t resist feeding them. The mother ducks would also yap at each other and would nip another mom's duckling if it tried to join her brood or eat her duckling's food. These are my favorite duck photographs of the day.

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Female Mallards

I was walking around here waiting to run some errands and saw two female mallards on the lower pond. I slowly walked around the perimeter of the pond as they watched me. On the other end of the pond they burst out of the water and went into the trees. I managed to get one or two decent shots of them in flight. I really need a longer lens for those times, like here, when the ducks were in the pond and I was far away.

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Odd Shots: Duck Tipping

Three mallard drakes were swimming side by side yesterday. Perfectly synchronized, they all oddly tipped and rose at the same time. I always enjoy watching duck (and geese) feet wave in the air when they tip. But I noticed a couple of other things in these photos . . .

. . . the feet should be held underwater for balance . . .

. . . and just before they tip over, they look as if they are capsizing!

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Wood Ducks, Mallards and the Heron

Thursday morning was very busy at the beaver bog. A pair of wood ducks flew in as I was photographing mallards and a great blue heron. The male wood duck is dark with the stripes and rufus breast. The female is drab brown but has a white patch over her eyes that you can see in one or two of these photos.



Below you will see photos of the mallards. The male has the emerald green head and a white stripe around his neck. The female, again, is drab brown. Both have purple feathers on the back of their wings.


The mallards were paddling about the area where the great blue heron was preening itself for over an hour. They even climbed up on the hummock that the heron was on. None of the birds seemed to be bothered by the other.

The morning sun was brilliant so it was impossible to get the glare of the sun off of the birds. But it was more important for me to capture these moments than to worry about how perfect I could get the shots.

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