I’d put off this sort a little too long, especially since I’m getting new pics pretty much daily, so I had to slog through over 1,700 images this time – it took a while. But naturally, I ran across a few to feature that I hadn’t immediately put to a blog post, and here we are.
This… is a sparrow. I think. What species of sparrow, I cannot say – see previous sentence. The problem is, I’m not too familiar with the little songbirds, and plumage varies with season and location, and this is an odd angle anyway, but if I had to bet, I’d simply say song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) because they’re quite common. We’re not here for that, so stay focused; we’re here for the lovely detail in the feathers, which is faintly annoying. It’s annoying because I just got through discarding a hell of a lot of wood duck photos because focus wasn’t tight enough, and I have this from a casual shot one day. Of a sparrow. I think. This is a tight crop at almost full-resolution, so focus was on for this one. Figures.
The light and the focus were working for this pair of mallards (Anas platyrhynchos,) foraging in the backyard pond. Considering the shooting angle, I was fairly close to these two (even though this is a tighter crop,) and so it might actually be the pair that is getting habituated to us fairly quickly, having taken their cue from the Canada geese – two pairs of geese and one pair of mallards now come up to the banks, and sometimes much closer, when they hear us out there with the cup of corn. It’s quite entertaining.
One of the sharper wood duck photos that I have, which is an accomplishment because they still maintain their distance assiduously. The male is in the back, the female in front – except that’s not a female wood duck, but a mallard instead; compare the schnozzes. No hanky-panky going on to my knowledge – they just hang out together semi-frequently, and the ‘spouses’ of both were sitting just outside the frame. Of course we have an annoying weed cutting across the frame, but that’s partially my fault because I haven’t gone out and whacked down the stuff around the edges of the pond. Compared to how it was late this past summer, though, this is superb visibility, and I’ll have my work cut out for me to maintain clear views to the water’s edge this spring. Donations of weed trimmer cord are greatly appreciated.
And finally,
I initially saw this from a significant distance across the pond and wondered what the hell it was, because it hadn’t been there a couple days earlier, and it seemed too big (a half meter or more) to have been blown in with the wind or something. Eventually I determined that it was ice from the surface of the pond. The freezing rain storm had overloaded many smaller trees and caused them to dip quite low, and the subsequent freeze caught these branches in the ice atop the pond. As the thaw was occurring, the branches were no longer so burdened and straightened back up, in a few cases carrying with them some sheets of ice from the surface. It was quite bizarre and we probably won’t have the conditions to repeat it too often.
As I’ve said, I’ve been shooting frequently, so more will be along anon. Patience.