Tag Archives: duck

Otter Carnage

Friday evening after work, the sun was out and, with the time having changed, it wasn’t getting dark too early.  I decided to have a stroll down at Juanita Bay Park before going home.  Of course, the camera came with me.  Things were pretty quiet, and I was taking a few photos but decided it was time to head home.  As I turned to walk back, I saw a friend of mine, Lee, walking towards me.  I was about to greet him when he started running towards me and called out “otters”!

I turned around a pair of otters were swimming across the bay towards us.  They came towards the little island area and climbed out on to the shore.  It is a bit difficult to get a shot there, but I managed a few.  They moved along the shore and then back into the water.  They headed out to the middle of the bay.  Clearly, they were planning on hunting so we gave them a little time.  A short while later, one appeared on the surface with what looked like a fish.

Often, when the otters have a catch, they go to a buoy to eat it but, this time, they seemed to be heading back our way.  I was hoping that they would come up on the beach to eat.  Amazingly, that’s exactly what they did.  However, it wasn’t a fish that they had caught.  It was a duck of some sort.  One of them had caught it and it didn’t seem interested in sharing too much.  It proceeded to chomp down on its meal.

The sound of a otter’s teeth crunching the skull of a duck was hard to miss as it made it’s way through its meal.  The second otter was keen to share but the first one would the carcass up and turn around to try and avoid the interloper.  This was repeated several times.  In due course, it decided it was done and just left the remains.  I suspect some bits just aren’t that tasty.  While I did get stills, the eating process was far more interesting as video, so I shot more of that.  The feathers everywhere looked quite funny as they got stuck on the otter’s head while it ripped into the body.

Duck Arses

(British spelling for this title!). Really no deep insight from today’s post.  I was photographing the wildlife at Juanita Bay and a bunch of the ducks were busy feeding.  They would take it in turns as they dipped their heads underwater and stuck their tails up in the air.  Then, at one point, they all went under together.  Is it a good use of my time to be watching ducks sticking their arses in the air?

Finally Seeing The Mandarin Duck

For as long as I have been going to Juanita Park, I have been hearing about the mandarin duck.  We have tons of wood ducks but there is one mandarin that lives in the bay.  Everyone talked about whether they had seen it.  However, it was never wherever I went.  Finally I broke that “duck” (apologies for the awful pun).  It was hanging out in the bay in nice lighting conditions and seemed busy playing with some root.  After this visit, I was back a little while later and there he was again.  I guess I am trusted enough now for him to hang out!

Ducks Fighting The Current

The River Itchen runs through the center of Winchester and, just downstream of the old mill building, the water is very shallow.  The river bed provides a good location for a lot of weed to grow and the ducks seemed to enjoy feeding on this weed.  However, it did require a fair amount of effort on their parts as the current was flowing fast in the shallow areas.  It was fun watching them either paddling furiously or bracing against the river bed while dipping their heads under water to feed.  The water would sometimes roll up across their backs while they fought to stay in place.  After watching this for a while, guess what I chose to have for dinner!

Kids Love To Play With Sticks

If you see a kid wandering along the beach of through some woods, what are the chances that they will be wielding a stick that they have picked up?  Apparently, this is not limited to humans.  A family of ducks was swimming across the bay and one of them had a small twig in its beak.  At first I thought it was mistaken in grabbing it or had it stuck but it dropped it and then picked it up again swinging its head around with the stick swiping anything in sight.  I guess all kids are similar!

Stalling On The Back Of A Duck

Watching the bird flying around Juanita Bay can bring out the aero guy in me.  I was watching some ducks flying across the water and coming in to land.  While the wings were working hard, it was also possible to see the feathers fluttering on the back of the duck just below the neck.  Clearly, the flow is separating in this location when they are maxing out the lift and the feather get disturbed by the separation.  Does anyone else but me care?  Probably not so maybe no one is even reading at this point!

Kenosha Hangar Visit

Back when we lived in Chicago, I went to Kenosha to photograph the Grumman Wildcat that had recently been lifted from Lake Michigan.  While I was there, I also got to have a look around the hangar which housed the collection of Chuck Greenhill.  His airworthy planes were stored in the hangar but it was also busy working on restorations of some Grumman amphibians.

His Duck was in the hangar and it was a great looking example.  I was disappointed that I never got to see it fly.  It looked immaculate.  I understand it has been sold and is now in Texas.  There were also two Mustangs parked in there.  One of them, Geraldine, they claimed to be the most authentic Mustang example in the world.  I don’t know how you would measure such things but they seemed very confident claiming this.  It even included a full, working armament so you could head up and shoot someone down if you were so inclined.

The amphibian restorations were very interesting.  Bare metal fuselages and the wings off while they were in work.  It would have been good to make regular visits to see how things progressed but I was not able to go back again so couldn’t do that.  Even so, pretty cool to see the workmanship on these airframes.

Ducks at Low Level

While walking along the Sammammish River Trail, a couple of Mallard Ducks flew by me at low level.  I pulled the camera up at short notice to get a shot.  No time to change the settings so this is what I got on the spur of the moment.  As it happens, the shutter speed did a nice job of blurring out the background and making them look super speedy.  I kind of like it!

Ducks Take a Bath After a Busy Day

Walking back in to Log Boom Park from the pier, you get to the shoreline which is a popular spot for the ducks.  They clearly like the shallow water and the multiple spots where they can come out of the water to rest.  As I was approaching, they seemed to be in agreement that it was bath time.  Every duck was taking a turn at washing their plumage.

I figured I would take a chance on the shots.  Slow shutter speeds were worth a go.  The problem with this is that the ducks are moving a lot so the chances of getting a sharp head/eye are a bit limited.  However, if that does work out, the flapping of the wings should look more interesting than trying to freeze the action.  Making use of the high shutter rate on the camera is a good way of improving the likelihood of some success and, I was okay with getting a few that worked out.

Shovelers Doing Their Thing

The shoreline of San Francisco Bay has a bunch of ducks.  Of the ones I see a lot of, there are two main species.  The Mallards are a duck you will see almost anywhere.  The others are the Shovelers.  As the name suggests, Shovelers like to shovel around in the murk at the bottom of the water to see what they can find.  Their bill is shaped to help with rooting around in this mud.  The result can be that their heads are no longer the color of the feathers but are, instead, covered in mud.

There is plenty of muddy shallow water along the shore so the ducks will often take off and head to different feeding grounds.  It’s fun to try and get them in mid-flight.  If things are closer, they will save energy and paddle to their next spot.  The best shots are when they come up covered in mud.  They look almost surprised by what a mess they are!