Sometimes I observe this phenomenon when birds land on water and other times I don’t. I believe it depends on the landing style of the bird but I’m trying to figure out how and why it happens.
There are still some beautiful fall colors in the valley, especially when they’re bathed in warm morning or evening light, and late yesterday afternoon I actually succeeded in capturing some of them in the background of this four image series of a juvenile Double-crested Cormorant in flight.
It’s been a while since I published a potpourri post so I figured it was about time. Each of the following 8 images was taken over the last 8 days in places like Bear River MBR, Antelope Island, Farmington Bay WMA or other favorite haunts of mine in northern Utah.
There’s twelve images here but this post is really about my experience using Canon’s “new” EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens in combination with a 1.4 extender (teleconverter).
Some behaviors I witness in nature remain unexplained even after much thought and review of multiple images documenting them. Such was the case three days ago at a pond near my home.
This juvenile cormorant immediately caught my eye as being different from the others it was with.
I should aim my lens at cormorants more often than I do. Both their physical appearance and their behaviors seem almost prehistoric and that piques my interest.
I’m not much of a fan of plain blue sky backgrounds for flight shots and on this morning I was resigned to such an outcome in any flight shots I might get because the sky was virtually cloudless. But just as I snapped the shutter this bird passed by one of the few small clouds to be found anywhere and there was even a tinge of pink provided by the color of the rising sun.
The Double-crested Cormorant is a common species throughout most of the continental U.S. but its namesake “double crest” is seldom seen well.
