Well, I'm all excited to have a nice quiet evening photographing,right? I pull into the parking area and quickly realize there is an outdoor concert very close by. Crap! So much for a quiet evening. It was Hazel Miller who is very well known and talented, so I was able to deal with it. Most of the wildlife was okay with it too. So off I went in search of some of the local wildlife.
I quickly found the momma wood duck with her 4 babies. There was a another duck close by. It took me a minute to realize it was the male wood duck! Ha! He looked all washed out colorwise. All the bird books only show him in full mating courtship colors. So this was pretty cool. It was very challenging to get good pics as the cattails were very thick. But I'll be back soon to get better pics.
I continued on and found one of my night heron friends as he was fishing.....
I moved on to the small pond but it was pretty quiet. So I headed back to the big pond. I think I found the other female wood duck who had 9 babies. I had seen her on the small pond last week but now she was on the big pond with only 2-3 babies. Aaah, the circle of life. I have a feeling the missing babies were dinner for a predator. Ouch!
I decided to go back and see what the night heron was doing. He had moved and now his friend was nearby too. I had brought my tripod along in case I saw these guys. It does help immensely in getting sharp photos. I do prefer hand holding the camera as I like to hike along as I photograph. But figured I'd give this a go. So I set up the tripod, get my camera attached and focus on one of the night herons. I'm standing quietly enjoying the night heron's beauty and I hear a person walking their dog nearby. I figure they'll walk by quietly but noooooo! The old man stops and says loudly " are you waiting for a good shot?" Now obviously this man has no clue that yelling will scare the birds away. So I barely whisper
yes, hoping that will give him the idea to be a bit more quiet. Well, he did get quiet and stood there breathing down my neck. I was just getting ready to pick up my stuff and move to get away from him when his dog wanted to move on, so they finally walked away. That was weird! Here are a couple of pics of the herons.
I never get tired of seeing these two!
It was getting dark, so walked back to the parking lot. The cormmorants were all roosting. Cool!
Thanks for reading and Happy solstice!
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