Passing time, waiting and enjoying.

Wildlife photography  has so many parallels to my many years of hunting.  In those years I would sit on watch for hours just watching nature unfold before my eyes.  Harvesting a deer, squirrel or turkey wasn't my major objective in those years and as time evolves that becomes even more evident.  I have vivid memories of sitting there motionless watching a a gray squirrel scampering along with his cheeks stuffed with acorns heading to his winter pantry.  I have spent umpteen hours trying to not move a muscle in hopes of having this Chickadee land on my gun barrel.  And yes, on rare occasions I got my wish.  Sounds like a trivial thing but to me it was a victory.  It meant I had managed to blend into nature and for that moment to that little bird I was a tree or a clump of Laurel.  Recently my wife experienced that same thrill as we sat in our blind waiting hours for the chance of a lifetime, to photograph a cute pair of Albino fawns.

As we sat silently our silence was broken by the loud snort of a protective doe and fawn that nearly ran over our blind.  The two stopped just beyond our blind and gazed at us for long moments at a time.  They knew something wasn't right and something was there.  Perhaps they got wind of my wife's bug spray or they got a glimpse of my white "L"  Canon Telephoto lens protruding out from the access window.  Perhaps even the fiery red sky which was signaling the end of another day had reflected off my lens and gave away our location.  Whatever the reason, she got to experience how cool this was and that made to wait worthwhile.  I snapped a few quick shots of this young fawn before it dashed away along with it's Mom.  And yes, that's where the parallel ended because I got a successful shot but the subject continued on.

As we sat there we watched a butterfly fluttering from flower to flower with no obvious flight pattern other than to land on as many flowers as he could.  At first I took a few shots at 200mm but the distance was too great.  Sometime later this same butterfly made his way toward our blind and came in for a landing on a flower right in front of our blind.  I fired off a few quick shots and was pleased with the results.  Luckily my weapon was a Canon DSLR because there didn't seem to be a whole lot of meat on him anyway.