A Morning on the Refuge

I left early to be at Squaw Creek NWR at sunrise this morning. The forecast is for colder and wetter weather over the next few weeks, and I wanted to get the chance to shoot the birds before they migrated further south.

The morning stayed overcast, so the light wasn't great. Also, the geese are not roosting at the refuge. The water levels are low, with some of the marshes dry. The reports are that the geese are staying nearby as some deeper lakes.

But that didn't mean that there weren't lots of opportunities to see and photograph wildlife. There are over 100 swans on the refuge, tens, of not hundreds, of thousands of ducks, pelicans, coots and the local songbirds and deer as well. The slideshow below will show you the best images from the morning.




All images were taken with the Nikon D7000 / Nikkor 300mm f/4 / TC1.4 combination. Processing was done with PhotoMechanic / ACR / CS6 Photoshop.

Enjoy the birds !

Foggy Morning

Friday night the weather alerts were going off: "Heavy Fog Watch". Which to me meant a photo opportunity !

Saturday morning opened with some mist before dawn, and the fog grew deeper as dawn approached. I headed to a hillside meadow area that I had not visited before. The hillside faced the rising sun and I was hoping for a low lying mist filling the valley.

The fog was much more than that. At the peak it filled the valley and covered the hilltop to well above my head. It also drenched the grasses in a heavy dew.

The light changed and shifted as the morning went along. From a few peeks at color near dawn to a glow when the yellow sun started burning the fog away.