Green-Winged Teal

Happy New Year Everyone! Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I had not been out shooting for a while due to the holidays, but was finally able to go on Monday to a lake close to my home and photograph some of the wintering resident ducks. I arrived at my previously scouted waiting spot among some reeds and got set up, threw some seed into the water in hopes of enticing some ducks that way, and then proceeded to cover myself in camo netting. I had not been waiting more than 10 minutes when I spotted a northern harrier on the other side of the lake (which is pretty small btw) that was making its way closer to where I was, I changed some settings in preparation and locked focus onto the bird. It was coming closer and closer and I began firing off, then it turned and started coming head on towards me about 10 feet off the ground. My 40D and 100-400 are a terrible combination for birds in flight as the focusing really stinks, but I got a few okay images as it flew right over my head. A really cool experience to start off the afternoon for sure! After that I waited for close to an hour before a flock of gadwall swam over and proceeded to get extremely close. They were soon joined by some northern pintail, green-winged teal, american coot and a female bufflehead. I got some decent images of all the mentioned species, and have yet to edit them all. I had almost one hour of good light before the sun set and the lake was covered in shadow. It was a exceptional and much better than expected afternoon and I was thrilled to get some nice images. Hoping for more, I will be heading back out this afternoon, this time with the 7D just in case of another harrier encounter. Here is one of the images I have processed of the green-winged teal, hope you like it.

Image Data:

1/500 | f/8 | ISO 200 | Fill Flash | Tripod

click image to view larger size.