While getting all of the photos for the latest Estate Find, a set of bonuses simply walked right in, literally. I was sitting on the steps down from the deck with the camera and long lens in hand, just snagging pics of opportunity of the dusky Canada geese, when I spotted activity from the edge of the pond.
I don’t have to tell you this is a wood duck (Aix sponsa,) do I? There’s a bold pair that’s semi-tolerant of our presence, provided that we’re up on the deck and not moving much or making noise, but there’s a distinct limit to this, and they’ve never ventured any farther than just inside the pond edge, nor have they even approached if we’ve been down off the deck in the yard – that’s always enough to send them to the back of the pond, if not flying off down to The Bayou. But here they came, and I kept the camera raised to my eye with the barest of movement and simply fired off frames.
Now, the dusky geese with their geeseling were half the distance to us and foraging unconcernedly, and we thought that perhaps the wood ducks were curious about the young-uns. Whatever – I was watching in fascination.
I call this one, “Estate Gothic” – it will be a print soon. Look at the duckweed still on their breasts.
The idea that they were curious about the geeseling seemed to be disproved when they went past where the geese were, closer still to me on the steps, happily snagging the corn that is usually present (because we’re conscientious/obsessive about keeping everyone fed.)
At this point, I believe the male finally realized that they were drawing close to a human, or that that big lump on the steps was alive; they were now about eight meters or less off, and this is only slightly cropped from full-frame – she’s laying down. I’m honestly not sure what was going through their heads, because they’ve demonstrated how sharp-eyed and sharp-eared they are, and their awareness of how the landscape has changed (for instance, by the presence of people, no matter how still we are.) Did they honestly remain unaware of my presence, or did they get lulled into a sense of security by the geese (which has never been the case before – wood ducks make their own decisions.) Or were they just pushing their tolerance of us because we’ve not only been putting the food down, we’ve been otherwise unassuming and certainly non-threatening? I have to note that the wood ducks rarely even see us throwing the corn out because they typically fly off before they could witness it – these are the only pair that I feel comfortable saying have actually seen it, and even then the motions were usually enough to send them off.
Here, the male is now clearly aware and not comfortable with it, talking quietly to the female in their peeping, wheezy tones; only a few moments after this, they took flight back down to The Bayou. Still, this was encouraging that perhaps this pair will become tolerant enough that they’ll hang around in our presence – maybe not close approaches, but at least not fleeing for safety. And this is by far the closest that I’ve been in daylight when they could see me clearly – I’ve gotten closer at night when they were blinded by the headlamp and so unsure just were I was, we can’t really count that.