Quack

Shelley and I did a little paddle around the Arboretum today. One of the best things about the area is the constantly changing melange of waterfowl, rhythmically changing with the seasons. The duck du jour was the Green Winged Teal (above). We saw a good number of them, something of a rare treat.

Also, in case you don't know me, I'm a simple creature. I like my beer cold, my cars fast, and my ducks garish. The wood ducks were out in force as well (below), and they're always a hit with me.


Finally, I present a very intimate portrait of a Mallard. Shelley thoughtfully pointed out that they really are neat looking ducks, what with all the solid patches of bright green and yellow and orange (orange feet not visible here). We just don't normally think of them as all that neat because they're so common.


The Flickr album is here. It includes 2 pictures not shown in this post.

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Today was my first time really shooting with a "Red Dot Sight" on my camera. It's an absolute revelation for photographing fast-moving targets with extreme zoom. My whole, big, geeky rig looks like this:
It's a Daisy air-rifle sight mounted on the flash hot-shoe, with a 1.7x teleconverter on the end of the lens. The beauty of the sight is that you keep the camera at arm's length and you aren't just looking at the viewfinder, but everything else as well. This makes it possible to quickly aim and track. The user's view looks a bit like this (stuffed monster not included):


There's a glowing red dot. Whatever the dot is on, is where the camera is aimed. It's just that simple.