[livius]

Thanks! You always share such beautiful photos with us.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

pinglist

[Not A Snowbird]

God’s creation is a beautiful thing.

[ontap]

Great picture...My wife and I retired to a lake front lot on Lake Palestine in east Texas. We enjoy encounters like this on a regular basis.

[sheikdetailfeather]

Very nice!

[Joe Brower]

We get these critters in my backyard pond once in a while -- very pretty birds. Very active, too, compared to other ducks; these guys eat fish and go after them like Anhingas.

Very shy, too. As soon as they know they're being watched, they usually take wing.

[yarddog]

I was just thinking that I have not seen a duck this whole Winter. Part of it may be the drought. The pond close to my house nearly dried out.

I did see a huge flock of turkeys just a few days ago. They appeared to all be hens and were in the power line right-of-way, just off the highway. There were maybe 25 of them.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Gorgeous! How did they know to arrange themselves in an alternate pattern.

[Retired Greyhound]

Long time birdwatcher here. I would like to be on your ping list, if you have one.

That is a great shot. We have a good deal of Mergansers here in SoCal.

[MissMagnolia]

Great picture .... the light on the water is really gorgeous.

[rockinqsranch]

Great. Thanks for the ping SWAMPSNIPER.

[762X51]

Good shootin’

[Hunton Peck]

“Looks like we got ourselves a convoy!”

I moved away from a lake a couple of years ago. I thought I’d had enough of the whining jet skis and noisy weekends in general, as well as the sky-high prop taxes. But I sure am missin’ the ducks.

And the loons.

And the ospreys.

Thanks for the reminder!

[3D-JOY]

Nice to see you are getting out...hope it continues, so we can receive more of you beautiful pictures!

[esoteric]

Beautiful!

[Bigg Red]

Beautiful! Thank you.

Nice of them to pose for you. :)

[Silentgypsy]

So beautiful—thank you very much!

[stylecouncilor]

Awesome!

[rustbucket]

Pretty ducks.

Northern Shovelers have shorter lines in Texas:

I took this photo with a two-power teleconverter and a 100-400mm lens set at 400mm. The teleconverter made it necessary to focus by hand. It is hard to get that focus just right, so I was experimenting with setting my f stop high, so that I would have a larger area in focus. At the same time, since this photo was effectively taken at a focal length of 1280mm (1.6 from the camera times 400mm times 2), I wanted a fast shutter speed to stop movement and camera shake. I set my f stop at 20 and my ISO at 2500. This resulted in a shutter speed of 1/3200ths of a second. This met the rule of thumb that you should have a shutter speed at least as fast as 1 over your effective focal length (1280 in my case).

[TEXOKIE]

Pinging the Agenda 21 folks! Here’s how I prefer to think of wildlife!

Thanks for the wonderful pictures Swampsniper! Thank you for the respite you provide!

FYI, in the past several days we have learned that the new Global Warming replacement scam seems to have to do with efforts to “protect wildlife.”

If you want to be on or off the Agenda 21 ping list, please notify me by Freepmail. It is a relatively low volume list in which we have been exploring the UN Agenda21 and related topics. We have collected our studies with threads, links, and discussions on the Agenda 21 thread which can be found here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2738418/posts