Okay, picking up where I left off with Rollins Savanna.
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| Patterned Feathers |
Because I ended up hiking counter-clockwise, I found the area I was looking for sooner than I expected. Which was a good thing, as the animals were already starting to settle in for the evening. This duck was eating the duckweed (go figure). I adore the patterns in his feathers.
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| Duck in Bubbles |
There were a lot of ducks out there from a couple of different species. This female mallard was in the middle of a ring of bubbles. I'm not sure what was making the bubbles (I don't think it was the duck ;), but it makes for an interesting shot. :)
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| Egret in the Grasses |
Okay, so my parents live in Florida and they call these things "Florida Chickens" - they're kind of ubiquitous down there. But in Northern Illinois they're a little more rare. (Did I mention this before? As I type that I'm having deja vu.) And I was kind of keen on how you can barely see the water, and the egret is such a small part of the picture.
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| Watching Lunch |
I was able to sneak up a little closer as he was looking for food in the pond. I love the shapes they can make with their necks.
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| Egret Reflects |
This was as close as I could get on the bridge. Another reflection shot. Yes, I'm unusually enamored of those lately.
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| Frog from Behind |
As I came around the path and onto the bridge over the second pond, I found this frog. I have no idea what he's sitting on, but you can see that he's, essentially, not in the water. And while I was able to see him breathing, he was otherwise very, very still. I walked up to him, and past him. And then about an hour later I circled around and he was *still* there.
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| Can I Help You? |
I can't get the color on this one to correct the way I want it too. I've discovered that the white balance - even the auto-WB setting on my camera is great when I'm shooting in Aperture or Shutter Speed modes, but when I use the auto-settings, like 'sports-mode' or 'portrait', the shots come out much too blue.
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| Eyes and Ears and Froggy Toes |
I think this is from my second pass. Still just sitting there. Talk about a great shot of a frog's ear. Check out how prominent that tympanic membrane is.
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| Kildeer on Muskrat Lodge |
Again with the color correction issues. Partly it's saturation, partly it's white balance, and I haven't yet completely figured out how to fix that in my post-production software. Anyway, another new species. Kildeer! Talk about skittish birds! This was as close as I could get, and I spent quite a while trying. I'd always heard that there were Kildeer in Northern Illinois, but I'd never seen one before these. They're sitting on muskrat lodges. I checked repeatedly and moved very slowly, but despite the *large* numbers of lodges (another casualty of kids not being able to handle language - we would have called these dams when I was a kid) and the large number of birds I saw on them, I didn't see one muskrat all day.
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| Muskrat Casa Es Mi Casa |
Speeking of Birds on a Lodge... here's a duck making herself very comfortable.
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| Sunflowers Stretch into Fall |
A few flowers were holding on even though fall was seriously starting to settle in. These little sunflowers were a nice spot of bright yellow on a gray day.
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| Dam Lodge |
Here's one of the lodges. Don't get the idea that they've been there for a while, but there's greenery and flowers growing on top of most of them. I want to head back in the spring, because I would imagine they make great nesting spots for breeding ducks.
Okay... there's more, but I think I actually have more than ten shots in this post, so I'll wrap this post here.
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