The blackbirds are leaving now so the herons are returning. Matt was fortunate to get excellent photos of one the other day. Above: his unprocessed photo. Below: my crop of it.
Above: his unprocessed photo. Below: my crop of it. The blur is from the optical zoom that attempts to "draw" the photo from data it has.
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.
All photos open in a new window, full-size, when clicked.
Wordless Wednesday