All week I wasn’t finding a whole lot of new things to photograph, and Thursday was busy all day, so I ended up trying to find something late Thursday night/early Friday morning. I was out with the night rig, and indeed got a glimpse of beavers, twice, but never could get focus before they slipped out of sight, and my attempt to out-patience them failed; I saw some ripples and heard a plop, and I’m vaguely suspicious there’s another lodge that I hadn’t known about, but that was it.
Returning, I was still looking around by the headlamp when I thought that the shapes on Turtle Island didn’t look quite right, and got the lens and focusing light on it.
Yep, that’s a female wood duck, which I was pleased to find because there’s been no evidence that they were remaining on the pond overnight – every time I watched in the evening, everyone seemed to head out for the lower part of the pond, dubbed The Bayou. Naturally I zoomed in as much as possible, and Turtle Island really isn’t far from the bank, so I could close in pretty well for a single frame before she slipped into the water. Framing, that’s another matter.
It was this shot that made me go out to try again later on, after she’d returned to this roost, because I was annoyed with myself that the one sharp, closeup image was framed so badly. She wasn’t copacetic with the attention and soon slipped almost silently into the water, before I could nail focus, but I had a couple of frames that made me pause, and the drooping wing up there was suddenly explained. It took two more tries to finally get what I was after, and by this time it was beginning to rain seriously.
Ducklings! This was definitely a surprise, because first of all, I had seen no evidence of nesting at all, and second, I would have confidently told you this was too early for ducklings – so much for my judgment. This wasn’t too far from the nest box, either; had she used it, or something else? I have no idea. No male was in evidence in the slightest, by the way, any of the four times I was trying for shots.
By the way, if you go back to the second pic and look right in front of her breast, you’ll see the first confirmation – I hadn’t actually found it until subsequent tries when the rippling I was seeing in the focusing light (which was much less effective than the flash, many times dimmer) made me suspect the ducklings.
But almost immediately after the above frame, the brood shifted and gave me an excellent family portrait:
Well, if you’re all going to be that cooperative, I’m amenable. By this point it was raining seriously, and between the risk to the camera equipment and the risk to the ducklings from getting too wet, I abandoned further efforts – the risk to the ducklings wasn’t that high, since it remains 16°c out there and they were exposed to the rain for about 10 seconds before I let them be. Considering that only a couple hours ago I was thinking I’d have to punt the Estate Find, though, this works pretty damn well.