Tag: Horse Lake

At the Edge of the Ice

A female bufflehead surfaces next to the ice in a rapidly thawing Horse Lake

A female bufflehead surfaces next to the ice in a rapidly thawing Horse Lake. I felt bad for her, she had been feeding on her own, the only bufflehead on the lake, when a male/female pair flew in and started harassing her. She’d move off on her own, minding her own business, but the other two would still frequently swim over and chase her away. She was the first bird I photographed that morning but this picture is from an hour and a half later near the end of my time watching her.

The Pintails

Six pintails stand on the melting ice in Horse Lake

Six pintails stand amidst the melting ice of Horse Lake. They reminded me of teenagers lined up along a wall at a dance, a little too nervous to take to the dance floor, especially the males who looked like they were decked out in formal attire. In truth they were a little ill at ease and anxious for the ice to finish melting, as they are as awkward on the ice as they are graceful in the water.

You’ve Got a Little Something …

As the rain pelts down a female lesser scaup swims with plants on her back that she picked up during her last dive to feed at Horse Lake at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge in Ridgefield, Washington in December 2011

I’ve often thought about creating an album called “You’ve Got a Little Something …” to highlight animals that are carrying around a bit of their environment they picked up along the way. Diving ducks like this lesser scaup sometimes surface with plants that snagged on their back during their last feeding foray, but they often shed them on their next (as happened here, she surfaced after her next dive with a clean back).

The Happy Scaup

A female lesser scaup yawns as she swims across Horse Lake

Over the past few years I’ve noticed there’s a lone female scaup that sometimes hangs out at Horse Lake. I don’t know if it’s the same bird from year to year, and she often hangs out at the far side of the lake, but it’s always a treat when she swims in close. Unfortunately in this instance I had been photographing diving coots and ducks and to get a high shutter speed was shooting at ISO 3200. That’s higher than I like to push the 7D and the technical quality of the picture suffers a bit for it, but since she was yawning it provides a nice change from my other pictures of her.