Enjoying all that Nature Offers: March 2014

It's hard to imagine a bad day outdoors. I've spent countless hours in brutal cold temperatures with driving winds and still called it a great day. Even rain does little to dampen my spirits. Now that's not saying that I wouldn't choose a mild day with comfortable temperatures to be outdoors, but I'll take what ever Mother Nature dishes out and still enjoy it. After all, critters are funny and unpredictable and some of the worst weather days proved to be the most productive for wildlife. You just never know about critters so if you want to increase the odds of great photographic opportunities, you need to weather the storm, endure the cold and embrace the elements. It's all about capturing the memories.

The images below are just random shots that I decided to post in my blog so that readers can enjoy the memories that I have captured from the comfort and warmth of their home. Typically I would have a long story to go with the images I post but that won't be the case this time. I bet this will make a lot of people quite happy. The cool thing about wildlife photography is that aside from hopefully going home with a card filled with decent images you also go home with some amazing memories. Years later you can look at many of your pictures and experience some of the same feelings that you experienced the moment you pressed the shutter and captured the image. Okay, on to the pictures!

Porky's seem slow and sluggish but don't think for a moment that it's easy to get a decent picture of their face. Typically when you get close enough to capture their face they will quickly turn with their butts toward you since that is their first line of defense. Contrary to beliefs, they cannot fling the quills at you and I'm quite thankful for that.

The three images above were taken mid March 2014. This mature Bald Eagle was very aware of our presence but did sit still long enough for a few shots. It was a very windy morning and even though the Eagle was stationary, the branch he was on was bobbing like crazy and therefore required a fast shutter.

The spring migration is always an exciting time for us as we try to locate and photograph a new species of ducks. Here is a Green Winged Teal that posed nicely but wasn't too keen about letting us get close so we took what we could get.

Spring is an exciting time if you happen to be a big bold Gobbler. Photographing them when they are all fanned out is like winning the lottery. Well, almost like winning the lottery.

Walk along any waterway on a sunny day in the winter and you will be treated to mother natures jewelry box.

It doesn't always have to be dark to capture interesting shots of the moon. This image required some significant underexposing to bring out the lunar detail.

On this day I was watching for Eagles along the river when this family of deer stepped out of the woods and seemed to be checking out the thick slabs of ice that lined the banks of the Clarion.

In this image it appears as though the American Coot and the Redhead Duck were engaged in a pretty serious conversation.

We watched for hours as the American Coots would dive to the bottom and bring up a rock covered with Zebra Mussels. Apparently they were quite tasty because they would clean off one rock and then dive down and bring up another.