These are just a few recent images that demonstrate one of those factors I struggle with, in this case, trying for ‘that portrait’ of a wood duck. And I’m doing this because, while I just now got a video clip of some other species entirely to feature, I also have background noise that will prevent doing the voiceover for a while. So we have this instead.
Anyway, the wood duck (or one of them, anyway) that likes to claim territory and harass the others:
This particular position really brought out the iridescence of the wing feathers, a pretty rare thing in my observations, and this is probably intentional (for a completely misleading interpretation of ‘intent.’) First off, it only happens in bright sunlight, which the ducks tend to avoid, and those blue feathers are most often obscured under the others. They are, likely, both a display for mating and an indication of what species they are when they’re flying, leading the others in a flock away to safety (rather than, for instance, having them follow the hawk that just dove in to try and snag one for a meal.) However, attracting the attention of predators is a bad thing, so the feathers become notably muted and drab when in shadow, and wood ducks are good about remaining in shadow. Meanwhile, the head itself, so often a display of its own iridescence, isn’t catching the light correctly to show it at this angle.
Now we jump a mere second later, as the female that was being chased off by this one splashes into the water:
The male is in largely the same position, just turned ever-so-slightly, but the gleam from those blue feathers has now about vanished. They’re not covered, just at the wrong angle to diffract the light in the previous manner. And still no glow from the head.
Now, I wasn’t keeping track of who was who at the time, because it’s actually pretty hard when they’re nigh identical and keep dodging back and forth as wood ducks do, but the next pic is only 30 seconds earlier, and I think it shows the same territorial male coming up from the water towards a different male onshore:
If you look closely, you can see that the beak is open on the one in the back. No nice blue wing feathers, but the iridescence on the head of the rearmost one is now showing a bit, indicating that only minor changes in angle can radically change how these ducks appear.
Which is why I’ve been pursuing ‘that portrait’ for a while now. Not only does it take bright sunlight, which the ducks appear within only briefly, but just the right angle to bring out the best colors, and this occurs so fleetingly that it can vanish before I’ve tripped the shutter. To say nothing of having a decent setting, background, position of the ducks, and of course sharp focus. In a species that I have to work quite remotely from because they don’t tolerate human presence at all. Excuses, excuses, yeah I know, but these are one of the more challenging subjects that I’ve tackled, and a lot of it has to do with, they only look really good when they’re just so…