Duck Pond

All posts tagged Duck Pond

Friday ~ October 12, 2018

Posted by Dave Updegraff on October 12, 2018
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

Happy TGI Friday for all my friends who are still working.

After I finished up my photo shoot in Maquoketa yesterday, I decided to drive out past the Duck Pond.  This is what I found on my way out-of-town.  This was a corn field that hadn’t done very well and had been chopped into silage.  It was flooded and a family of Trumpeter swans were picking corn off the ground.  This is the male of the family.  I was surprised at how close they let me get to them.  I guess the pickings were better than their fear of me.  Especially because I stayed in my car.

I was happy to see the four young signets from this past season.  The dad kept a close eye on me while the others continued to feed.

Farther away across the field (lake) was another family of swans with three signets.  I couldn’t get all four of them in the shot.  Interestingly as I went past the Duck Pond it was a full of water as I can ever remember and not one species of wildlife was in it.

About one hundred yards down the road was this cornfield under water.  I certainly feel bad for the farmers of the area.  They work so hard getting the ground ready, planting, maintaining.  Have a reasonably good growing season and then when it’s time to harvest their crop this happens.  Difficult lively hood. We are grateful for them.

Enjoy your day and be careful.

Friday ~ August 31, 2018

Posted by Dave Updegraff on August 31, 2018
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

Happy Friday!

I had a great day yesterday.  Started off by meeting with a new client for a photography project I’ll be doing in September.  Then I arrived at Maquoketa to have lunch with a dear Friend and was about 30 minutes ahead of time.  I know, hard to believe since I have spent most of my life being fashionably late for things.  🙂

Anyway, with some time to kill, I stopped at my favorite place, the Hurstville Marsh and decided to take some images.  There were no wildlife around so just for fun I used my Nikon 70 – 200mm f2.8 lens, which is my normal portrait lens.  While these won’t win any awards for photography I was pleased with how they turned out.

After lunch I received a call from a Friend I haven’t seen in sometime.  He among other things is an avid photographer and I’ve wanted to get together with him for a long time to do some photography together.  We had a great discussion about my new endeavor, Have Studio Will Travel.  He has been doing portraiture work for awhile and I really admire his work.  He also had a session last year with the famous head shot guru Peter Hurley, so to get the opportunity to photograph and talk with him is a real treat for me.  We’re getting together next Thursday so I’m excited by the possibilities.

By the way, the little fly in the right hand corner of this image was just a lucky accident.  I didn’t even notice him until I was in post production.  You can click on any image to see a larger more detailed image.

Finally I had the chance to hook up with some friends I haven’t seen for a long time.  Our visit was short but it gave me a real boost.

Starting my eighth month of full retirement has been a wonderful experience.  I enjoy all the freedom and lack of stress.  The real downside however is that I miss my friends and so many of the people I worked with.  I enjoyed the work that I did but I realize now that it was the people I worked with that made the job what it was.  That’s why I end up in Maquoketa and some of the other towns where the organization is because I need that friend connection.  🙂

Enjoy your day and of course be careful.

Friday ~ April 14, 2017

Posted by Dave Updegraff on April 14, 2017
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , .

Happy Friday!

I have three images for you today that I captured last evening on the way home.  On the way to work yesterday, as I came by the “Duck Pond” I saw a large clump of white birds sitting on one of the islands.  At first I thought they were swans but as I got closer I could see that it was a large gathering of Pelicans.  They covered most of the small island.  For once I wasn’t late but if I had stopped and set up for the shot I would have been so I just kept going.

The thing that bothered me was that there had been three separate pairs of geese nesting on the island.  I knew that their nests were probably destroyed and that their young were never hatch.  The six geese were swimming around the island “honking” but there was little they could do against superior numbers and larger birds.

I had been in Des Moines for training on Tuesday and Wednesday so by the time I got caught up on my work it was much later and I couldn’t really tell what damage had been done to the nests.  This lone pelican was all that was left of the group.  There were no geese on the island.

I saw this wonderful sunset on the way home last night.  It would have been nice to have a large body of water in the foreground or something spectacular.  Unfortunately that was not to be so I just photographed the big red ball. 🙂

I couldn’t get the same angle on this goose to line up with the reflection of the setting sun like on the pelican.  I just enjoy photographing geese no matter.

That’s it for today.  Enjoy your day and be careful.

 

Posted by Dave Updegraff on September 17, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , , .

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Happy Saturday!

I have several images for you today.  Yesterday I drove to Maquoketa to have lunch with a Friend that I haven’t seen in some time.  After lunch and on my way out-of-town I stopped by the “duck pond” because I saw a Great White Egret sitting at the marsh and I cannot pass up a chance to photograph them.  It was a beautiful day with a nice breeze (very windy at times) and low humidity.

Since I didn’t have a suit on I decided to explore the wild prairie grass area and look for butterflies.  I am pleased with the image above and some of the other images I was able to capture.

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I rarely can pass up wild flowers.  It was difficult to capture images of anything that was nailed down because the breeze was blowing things around pretty good and it was difficult for the camera to lock on focus.

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This Common Buckeye for example is a little softer than I like, because he was on some flowers that were really being tossed around by the wind.  My lens would drop focus and then reacquire it.  I have my camera set up so that if it does not focus I cannot take the shot.  I don’t want a bunch of completely blurry images but even on this setting there are some less than sharp images that get taken.

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This was the last image I captured.  As I was walking deeper into the grass area I saw the unmistakable movement of a snake slithering into the tall grass.  Probably just a small Garter snake but a snake non the less.  I’m the first to admit that I have a snake phobia (i.e. an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something. Common phobias are a snake phobia.)  So yes my friends can tell me all they want to that there is nothing to be fearful of, but a phobia is a phobia and I’ve had it all my life.  😦

So it was a hasty retreat to the car and back to Dubuque.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Enjoy your day and be careful.

 

Friday ~ March 25, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on March 25, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , .

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Happy Friday / Good Friday!

I have four images for you today that I’m showing because they tell a story and not for their image quality.  I have saved these images for sometime now because I didn’t want to embarrass the eagle.  🙂

So as you view the first image (which was taken at the 16th Street Basin) you can see there is ice on the water.  This eagle had been up rooted from his sitting place by a larger eagle and so he was moving to a new spot.  He clearly thinks he is landing on another patch of “solid” ice.    This was the last day, by the way, that there was ice on Basin.

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This is that “Oh damn” moment when he breaks through the ice and sinks deep into the water.

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It all happened so quickly I didn’t have a chance to feel concern for him and you can see, as he sinks deeper his powerful wings are providing some lift to extricate him from his predicament.

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Free of the water and with his pride still in tact he flies off to another area, probably to the river where no one knows of his faux pas.  How do I know that this is a male eagle?  Simple a female eagle would have never made such a silly mistake.  🙂

I had an interesting experience yesterday.  Normally when I don’t have a lunch meeting or someone to go to lunch with I will grab my camera, get a quick bite to eat and go looking for images.  It was a nasty weather day yesterday with freezing rain and wet snow showers, so I didn’t take my camera with me.   After eating a quick-lunch I drove out to the “Duck Pond”  just to watch the geese (that’s all there is there right now) and to clean out my center console looking for my binoculars.  I hadn’t been there very long when a car pulled over in front of me to park.  I didn’t even glance up but I was aware that a person was approaching the driver’s side of my car.

They knocked on my window and when I looked up it was my good friend Andreas.  He was on his way home from a business trip in Chicago.  He saw my car from the highway and made an unscheduled stop.  We had a wonderful conversation for about 30 minutes and got caught up on what each of us had been doing.  It made my afternoon.  🙂

That’s it for today.  Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Enjoy your day and be careful.

Thursday ~ September 10, 2015

Posted by Dave Updegraff on September 10, 2015
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , .

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Happy Thursday!

I didn’t have any lunch engagements yesterday so I did one of my favorite things to do, grab a salad and a camera and go find something to photograph.

Out of habit I always go by the Duck Pond first.  I found a pair of Trumpeter Swans on the North side of the pond but they weren’t cooperating so I took a couple of images of them and then was going to move on as is my tendency.

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For some reason this day, however, I decided to just stay.  I spent 40 minutes at the pond just looking and listening.  I enjoyed the peacefulness and was fascinated with the micro activity around the pond.  After a while I really started paying attention to the butterflies working the flowers.

I didn’t have my micro lens with me but any port in a storm so I used what I had, the 80 – 400 mm lens.  It worked pretty good.

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After work I spent an hour and a half driving around Maquoketa making some images.  The City of Maquoketa is in the process of building a new website and they wanted some images showcasing the community.  I agreed to help them with some images so I spent some time photographing some of the places of interest around town for that project.

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So it was kind of late when I got home.  Jeanne and I went out for dinner and I didn’t make good choices in what I had.  Can’t get by with that when you have Diabetes.  😦

That’s it for today.  I hope you enjoy the day.  Thanks for stopping by the blog and be careful.  The 14th anniversary of 9-11 is tomorrow.  Be aware.

Thursday ~ September 03, 2015

Posted by Dave Updegraff on September 3, 2015
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

September-02-2015

Happy Thursday!

One of my favorite things to do is taking place today.  We have Culture training at Camp Courageous.  We do this twice a year and use Camp Courageous as a retreat.  Charlie Becker and his wonderful staff are just super to work with and they go out of their way to help us have a successful meeting.

I always enjoy doing training and particularly this type of training.  I get to work with some very talented folks and it is just a real treat.

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On the way home last night I went by the Duck Pond as I always do and to my great surprise there were five Blue Herons in the Duck Pond stalking food.  I drove past the pond, pulled off the side of the road to get my camera set up for the shoot and then did another drive by.

To my delight none of them took off so I was able to get a few good shots.  The problem is the sun is always shinning directly against me on the way home so I really have trouble exposing for the mid-tones and shadows.

Additionally I do not normally carry my 600 mm lens so all I had was the 80 – 400 mm lens, which is a little short for the opportunity I had.

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All things considered I was happy to watch the Herons stalk their prey for a few minutes.  The light was difficult and they were a little farther away then I would have preferred but you take what you can get and move on.  🙂

That’s it for today.  Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Enjoy your day and be careful.

Sunday ~ August 16, 2015

Posted by Dave Updegraff on August 16, 2015
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , .

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Happy Sunday!

I have some images from the “Duck Pond” for you today that I took last Friday.  I was on my way out of town after photographing the human checker game and saw some activity at the pond.  I cannot pass up an opportunity to capture images of wildlife even if the lighting isn’t perfect.

Mother Duck was taking her new brood out for a walk.  When she noticed me they all scurried to her side and she promptly escorted them back into the tall grass.

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There have been a couple of Blue Herons at the pond this last week.  They stay pretty close to the inland shore line and they are difficult to photograph.  I only had my 80 – 400 mm lens so it’s not a tight shot but he was walking very slowly up the waterline looking for something to eat.

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Something startled him and in an instant he was flying away.  I don’t think it was me because I had been stationary for some time waiting for him to walk pass my vantage point.  He didn’t seem to mind my occasional shutter press.

Sometimes they don’t seem to mind being close to humans.  I have been able to get within a few feet of them and they pay no attention to me.  Other times a mere movement of your body and they are off.

That’s it for today.  As a teaser I may or may not have a great adventure story for you tomorrow.  It just depends on how today turns out.  🙂

Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Enjoy your day and be careful.

Friday ~ May 29, 2015

Posted by Dave Updegraff on May 29, 2015
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

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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.

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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.

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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. 🙂

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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.

Monday ~ May 25, 2015

Posted by Dave Updegraff on May 25, 2015
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

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Happy Monday!

Today we celebrate Memorial Day.  I remember when it used to be called Decoration Day and we would always go to the cemetery in Bethany.

What ever we call it, it isn’t enough of a tribute to all of those who have given some and for the some that gave all.  I think it is a national disgrace the way our government treats our veterans.  We send young men and women in harm’s way and when they come home we do not properly take care of them or their wounds.  It just makes me angry and frustrated because I don’t know what to do about it.

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Yesterday we drove to Maquoketa to attend the graduation party of Brian Specht, Son of my friend Chad and Vicky Specht.  It was a nice get together and when we left I decided to drive by the Duck Pond.  I was amazed to see pelicans, ducks, geese, blue herons, and great egrets.

You can see by the fact that the egrets and heron are standing in the middle of the pond that there is very little water in the pond.  I can’t imagine there are any fish in the pond and certainly not any after this large group of pelicans swept the bottom. 🙂

I only had my 400 mm lens with me and they were in the middle of the pond so much too far away to get a really sharp image.  I just wanted to show the population of the pond on at least this day.

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We had Angie, Ben, Josh, Gabby, Austin, Mark, and Taylor over for a cookout last night.  We had some bubble liquid left over from the wedding on Saturday and the kids had fun blowing bubbles on the back patio.

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Josh created this bubble and he actually wanted Grandpa to photograph it.  I wonder if he realized he would be in the picture as well.  🙂

That’s all I have for you today.  I’m hoping they get to have the Memorial Day parade today.  The radar looks like lots of rain in the area so we’ll see.

Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Enjoy your day and be careful.  If you get the opportunity, thank a veteran for their service to us all.