Ducks on the Pond

There have been a dozen or more ducks on the pond the past couple of weeks. I’ve enjoyed watching them with my binoculars, but I was anxious to photograph them this week using the tele-converter that Gary recently purchased for me. Couldn’t try it out any evening this week because of a combination of circumstances and lack of daylight, so I was excited about getting outside Saturday morning. However…

For those of you unfamiliar with this little gadget, it is a secondary lens mounted between the camera and the existing lens. So I have mine attached to a 70-200mm lens. The converter enlarges the image and since mine is a 2x it “doubles” the image. Don’t get excited yet! It also decreases the amount of light reaching the camera, so unless it is used in bright light the autofocus feature will not work. So that means manually focusing the lens. The converter also increases the length and weight of the whole unit so it makes it unsteady, thus requiring a mono- or tri-pod support.

Well, of course it was overcast all morning AND the wind was blowing about 30mph!! Not a great day to try managing an unwieldy camera-lens combo!! Plus there is a learning curve for anything new and I am the WORST about learning new technology. Freaks me out at first! I have anxiety attacks about breaking anything new. I must have been a destructive child or something. I don’t recall breaking very many things, but I do remember getting into trouble for losing stuff. So…I have to ease slowly into these things. (I once made the statement that I would NEVER learn to use the new camera.) Be patient and at some time during the Thanksgiving break there will be photos of the ducks on the pond. And I think the converter will be great at Hagerman!

Of course you can correctly assume that thinking so much about the ducks this week brought back some childhood memories! There have always been ducks in my life. Dad hunted ducks and we also raised them, ate them, and ate their eggs. I learned to clean a duck when I was still small enough to stand on a chair to do so. Can’t say that I was ever fond of eating duck but I never liked squirrel or rabbit either. We ate what Mom put on the table!

My grandparents often took me to the park to feed the ducks and geese, and of course we always did the same with our own children. Ducks were cheap entertainment. For the cost of a loaf of bread we could spend an hour throwing little bits into the water and watching the ducks swoop and splash and dive.

I never want to eat another duck. I really don’t have any desire to feed them either. I’m more interested now in identifying, observing, and photographing them. Most don’t stay long at the pond. I like to think about how far they may have journeyed to get here and where they are going for the winter.

I’m old. It doesn’t take much more than a few ducks on the pond to entertain me! 

Comments

[Megan]

How amazing that you have pictures to go along with your childhood. Really, so very neat.

The photo of you at the water's edge is striking.