Happy Friday!
My intent for today was to post images that had nothing to do with wildlife. But best laid plans…
So yesterday I had no lunch meetings or anyone to go to lunch with and that means grab a camera and head out. I debated about taking the 600 mm lens but reasoned that since there wasn’t anything at the Duck Pond on the way in that morning and that I wanted to shoot some farm buildings or scenes, I decided to take the 80 – 400 mm lens instead.
I didn’t find anything that drew my interest so on the way back to the office I came by the Duck Pond. There were a dozen or more pelicans in the middle of the pond so I thought I would just pull over and watch them with my binoculars until it was time to go back to work.
I noticed a pelican or two landing on a pretty frequent basis and so I got out of the car and looked up to see the first image. I won’t say the sky was black with pelicans but there were way more than I could get in the frame of the lens.
It was like being at a very busy airport with all the pelicans in the landing patterns, flying in large circles losing altitude. For awhile there was a steady stream of pelicans landing and joining the circle of pelicans.
I would occasionally look up to see if the flight was dissipating but there were more pelicans at higher altitude in the landing pattern.
When I first arrived at the pond there were maybe 15 – 20 pelicans in a tight bunch in what looked to be a feeding frenzy. I guess I had thought there were no fish in the pond because a couple of years ago the pond was bone dry. If there were fish in the pond they have to be gone now. 🙂
I had to leave before the landings were done. I have no idea how many pelicans were in the group. They were layers deep and the image above was all I could fit in my frame of view. If I were to hazard a guess I would say between 150 – 200 pelicans because they were still landing when I had to leave.
Talk about a butt shot. How about layers of butts. 🙂
It was one of the more interesting visits to the Duck Pond for me. I wish I had more time to photograph the process. When I came by the pond on my way home last night there was a smaller group of pelicans still in the middle and I could also see a half-dozen swans on the other side.
Even though the water level is low it is so wonderful to see all this activity at one of my favorite places.
That’s it for today. Enjoy your day and weekend. Thanks for stopping by the blog. Be careful.
