Another discovery we made is the Bird Viewing Preserve in Henderson. It is very cool! We went in February for our second visit. There were large flocks of Mallards, some Wood Ducks, of course some Coots, and plenty of Canadian Geese. There are nine different ponds that attract different groups of waterfowl and other wildlife.
This is the first time I used my 200-600mm lens. It was challenging getting the birds in the frame.
The first thing we noticed was the way the ducks were swimming in a circle while they were feeding. This group was mostly Mallards.
At the next pond, there were a lot of Wood Ducks in the group. The male Wood Ducks are the ones with the white and brown on the sides.
Here are the first geese that I captured. Kinda far away but at least they are in focus! Another thing I found challenging.
Rick spent many years hunting geese so he knew exactly when they were going to fly. They start to do a lot of honking before they get going. This is another flock that flew over us. And by golly, these are in focus too!
I was able to get zoomed in on the flock and caught a jet going through the frame. The birds were more interesting. LOL!
I kept trying to catch the geese either landing or taking off… many tries, like this one that would have awesome, if they were in focus.
The light was much better on this group. They were just gliding in on their massive wings.
Watching them land is really quite a sight! They cup their wings to slow down, then the flair out their feet so they can kind of ski along the water until they are all the down. They need a bit of space to do all that. 🙂
This is the aftermath of all those birds landing. The water is showing the glide path of each bird.
The birds were all just leisurely swimming around. A vary tranquil scene.
Then they decide to fly. They have to get a running start and they are honking the whole time… Kinda like, look out, here we come. Their feet send up huge splashes and then they are airborne.
Impressive! And they were flying right toward me. Couldn’t have asked for a better set of shots.
We were able to see the Great Horned Owl that we saw on our previous visit but this time he was even more hidded by the folage. On this visit, this was the best shot I could get.
The trip prior to this was a little better shot because of the bare limbs.
Another fun thing we saw were the cattails. Most of them had not started to break apart but when we touched them, they exploded all the seeds. It was really fun to watch. Millions and millions of tiny seeds just flying away or getting stuck to each other to form a massive plume of feathery seeds. A dandelion on steroids! This is why you have to spray cattails with hairspray or varnish if you are using them in a floral arrangement. They are beautiful but what a mess! Yikes.
And as we were headed on out, a trio of geese were taking a leisurely walk along the path. Not really concerned with us at all.
They just went down to the water and swam away.
It was an awesome day and we got some spectacular pix. Hope you enjoy them as much as we do.