EYE ON THE PRIZE

Wax Wing Away!

BLADERIDER

I’d swear they were having fun.

It was a hot and breezy mid-summer day on the pond. And I was actually in the pond half submerged under camo with the camera supported on a surrounding air tube – to enable me to get at eye level with the ducks. There wasn’t much duck action however, and I began to scout around for something else to shoot.

I spotted some damsel flies and drifted over to check them out. They were backlit and the sunlight enhanced the beauty of their wings and rim lit their delicate features. I got some beautiful shots of them hovering over the water with full reflections as soft focused shimmers of leaves and seeds floated by beneath them.

Then I saw the windsurfers.

The damsels were landing on the floating willow leaves. At first I assumed it was just to grab a rest mid-pond. But as I tracked with them it looked like they would land on a leaf, windsurf it to the edge of the pond, fly back up wind, select another leaf, and do it all over again.

Kowabunga.

Pitts' Piper

FIRST DAY OUT

LEANING IN

HIDING FROM HERON

A couple of herons frequent our ponds. Our dogs can be barking at them ten feet from shore and it doesn’t faze the birds, but I just have to open the door and they fly off. So, I generally spend an hour or two each week trying to sneak up on the herons.

For HIDING I slowly worked my way toward him by darting from tree to tree whenever he lunged for fish. I started shooting at about fifty feet from behind the cover of a pine tree and the tall shoreline grasses. That’s why he appears to be floating in a field of green.

Now I use a hunting blind to hide from the heron.

WARBLE

AFTER THE BURN

TEENIE LINGUINE

ILLUSION

CARDINAL BLUE

Didn’t know I could bend that way.

It was one of those sunny blue, bone-chilling days when everything is crystal clear. I was set up near the base of the walnut tree when I looked up and saw the male cardinal overhead, flitting about trying to decide if he’d brave coming in to the feeder with me around.

This was too good to be true. My always-imagined shot of the red against the blue was near at hand. I swung the camera upward. But he was almost directly overhead and I had set the tripod up as low as it could go to be level with some juncos feeding off the snow. So I had to contort on the ground and shoot him upside down. Think I invented a new yoga position (Cardinal Overhead). Nearly passed out from the blood rushing to my head and having to bend my neck beyond its tolerances.

But I survived and got the shot.

malecardinalredblue sky

Condensational

FINE LIINES

Great Blue Heron

El Cap

GRIZZLY DREAMS

DOWNCAST

ATHABASCA MOON

MISTY MORNING MALLARDS

It was a great week of summer weather and I was rising early, driving around the back roads looking for wildlife, trying to catch the light before going in to work. I had discovered a nearby pond that often had waterfowl on it: ducks, cormorants, geese, etc. It was just a big, square, man-made pond that wasn’t very picturesque but I could get a clear shot of it from the road. My scouting paid off when I got these mallards drifting in and out of the morning mist just as the sun cleared the banks.

the great blue yonder 3318

Scootching made this shot possible.

It’s often the case when I wake in the morning that I’ll look out from the bedroom window and see a heron on the pond. And as much as I’d like to go out to shoot I know from multiple past experiences that it’s almost impossible to get out there close enough to get a shot without spooking them.

But occasionally there are two herons, which means there’s a chance that something interesting can happen between them as they jockey around the pond for territorial position. And while they distract each other there’s a chance they might not notice a big guy with a huge lens sneaking towards them.

There wasn’t time to change so I just donned my camo hat and went out in my pajamas. I sat on my butt behind the camera and scootched forward along the wet grass whenever they weren’t looking. It took me a half an hour to work my way down the exposed hillside to the edge of the pond - a distance of a mere 60 feet.

I finally reached the cover of the tall grass along the pond edge and from that vantage caught this sequence of one heron crossing to get away from the other.

Then again, perhaps it was the pajamas.

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