The elusive wood duck

[clovishound]

Got a chance to go back to try my hand at some wood ducks this morning. The Pup was with me, so I abandoned the idea of setting up at one spot and wait for the ducks to come to me. I will try and get out soon by myself. I have a place staked out and will bring a folding chair, and perhaps my camo netting as a makeshift blind. Got a couple shots of them, but too far away.

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Got a decent shot of this guy. There was probably a wood duck or two inside him at one point.

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[Cofisher]

My mother loved the Woodies. She taught me where to look. And, had places on my folks land for them. I've only shot a couple. Thinking a camera may be my best shooting in the future.
Thanks for the inspiration.

[clovishound]

They are beautiful birds. They are one of the most skittish birds I've had in my sights. Most of the wading birds ignore you until you get within about 25 ft. The woodies take off with just a little noise from 100 ft or more. If they weren't so darned pretty, I would just ignore them.

[North Country Gal]

Very common nesting bird on our small lakes, up here. See many of them in spring and fall, too. Alligators, though, NOT.

[Mags]

They are here too seasonally.

[clovishound]

Ironically, the thing that most folks are almost obsessed with at the local parks is the alligators. And, it's not just the tourists. Many of the locals are nuts to see them, and talk about them as well. I've had enough up close and personal encounters with them to have satisfied my curiosity about our cold blooded neighbors.

[BrokenolMarine]

Great Pics Clovis, as always. I grew up in Florida, for the most part, and lived on a canal in a small town outside Tampa called Land o'Lakes for a couple years in a small cabin. We were just about 50 yards from the water. I had a row boat and was allowed to fish the lake by rowing out of the canal. My stepfather had resealed the bottom of the rowboat by painting it with road tar, so it was so heavy you couldn't capsize it if you tried. I was still in elementary school, but this was the 60s, rural Florida, and I was limited to the parts of the lake where I could still see the mouth of the canal.

We saw a LOT of gators back then.

[Sir Henry]

Very common nesting bird on our small lakes, up here. See many of them in spring and fall, too. Alligators, though, NOT.

We get turtles in the roads in the spring.

[clovishound]

Great Pics Clovis, as always. I grew up in Florida, for the most part, and lived on a canal in a small town outside Tampa called Land o'Lakes for a couple years in a small cabin. We were just about 50 yards from the water. I had a row boat and was allowed to fish the lake by rowing out of the canal. My stepfather had resealed the bottom of the rowboat by painting it with road tar, so it was so heavy you couldn't capsize it if you tried. I was still in elementary school, but this was the 60s, rural Florida, and I was limited to the parts of the lake where I could still see the mouth of the canal.

We saw a LOT of gators back then.

Gators in the lowcountry are FAR more numerous now than they were back in the 90s when I first started diving the rivers. I was talking to the folks at Magnolia Plantation the other day. They had drained the rice field to do the annual controlled burn. They said there were hundreds of gators in the field.

[North Country Gal]

Very common nesting bird on our small lakes, up here. See many of them in spring and fall, too. Alligators, though, NOT.

We get turtles in the roads in the spring.

When we're out on the trikes/bikes, we help the off the road when we can. The problem is that they like the sandy soil along roads for nesting.

[Hatchdog]

Wow, you went from the good to the bad and ugly in that series of pics.

Never seen a gator but would like to do so someday.

[BrokenolMarine]

One of our last trips to visit my folks in Fl before the move to OK, it was like the gators had taken over. We stayed in Destin and there were gators in the ditch on the outskirts of town. There were Gator Crossing signs, similar to Deer Crossing signs... where the roads would run between bodies of water. I made a joking comment to a shopkeeper and he said, "Oh, no, the signs are serious. We call them speedbumps here."

They have given new meaning to the "Water Hazard" on the golf courses.

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[clovishound]

Managed to get a few shots of some wood ducks at the Audubon Swamp this morning. Lighting was terrible and birds were too far away. As usual.

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[Hatchdog]

The Woodies look great Clovis. I think the green surface on the water really helps highlight the colors on the ducks.

[clovishound]

Unfortunately, it's some pretty harsh lighting. Full sun, late morning. The only thing worse would have been directly overhead.

Still, better to get the shot under less than ideal conditions, than to go home empty handed.

I did get something today to help get more usable shots. I got the Topaz Labs bundle. It has software that will clean up noisy images taken in lower light. It also can sharpen slightly out of focus images. What I have seen so far is that sometimes it doesn't work well with an image, and sometimes it does amazing things.

This is one I shot last week that was underexposed and high ISO. It was very noisy, and the clouds looked terrible. I ran it through Denoise and it cleaned it up rather well. The cypress branches are rather busy, but I like the shape and details in the spread wings, and the counterpoint with the mate in the nest.

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I used the Gigapixel program that came with it to clean up the picture of my grandfather. It does have a few unusual artifacts, but it does some amazing things with a very poor image.

The original:

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And here's the same image after processing:
Keep in mind it also doubled the size of the image. I probably should have brought it down to the same size for a direct comparison, but didn't feel like taking the trouble.

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[Hatchdog]

^^^^^^^

Wow, that’s amazing. The difference in the siding above the logs in the cabin are wonderful as is the detail in his gunbelt.

[BrokenolMarine]

I used to get some good pictures of the wildlife when kayaking. Great thing about kayak fishing, is they are so quiet ... If the fish aren't biting, you drift along and get great pictures.

I really like the colors and reflections in the turtle picture.

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This Green Heron pic would make a great puzzle.

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These guys waiting for a bus? (All turtles, back of the line!)

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I often got lucky, and the subject of the pics never even noticed until after the picture was taken.

[clovishound]

Looks like you've got your ducks in a row!

I played around this morning with the new software. It's not the magic they make it seem like in the advertising, at least with pictures taken with a decent camera and lens, that need some extra sharpening or noise reduction. It does a better job of noise reduction than sharpening in my limited experience so far. A few pictures have greatly improved with it, and some just a little. I do need to learn more about playing around with a few of the options and sliders. It doesn't look too complicated, and their aren't that many options.

I took another wood duck picture from Sat and ran it through the different software programs. This was the result. Not an artistic image, but not too bad considering the amount of cropping and the lighting.

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And just for giggles and grins here's an Ibis from the same trip. It was full sun, but was able to get close enough to preserve good resolution.

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[clovishound]

And a couple more I salvaged with Gigapixel.

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[BrokenolMarine]

Fantastic Pictures, the colors are so vibrant.

I used to love our favorite pond in VA covered in that duckweed. The bass would get ANGRY when we pulled Ribbet Frogs across the topwater and explode violently out of the water onto them. Big Flies with the fly rod like pond mice or hoppers would have the same effect. I miss it.