The light looked promising in Fulton when I left the office, but I began to have my doubts by the time I was in Hannibal. The clouds were rolling in and would almost certainly obstruct the light that I was hoping for. Still, I continued to Sterling anyway. The bugs aren’t out in force yet and the weather is going to be colder and wetter for the next 3 days. Then it is the weekend … now was the time.
Within 5 minutes of my arrival to the nature center, the sun was behind the clouds. It was obvious that there would be some short-lived moments of light over the course of the next hour, so I grabbed my bag and my tea and walked to the swamp (the signage calls it a rookery, but it is a swamp).
The cold weather was already evident and the birds were on their laying on their nests more than they were standing. They were flying even less and far fewer birds were in flight on this date than my previous visit.
The characters were the same this time as last, including the beavers, the swans, and the herons. I had good light 6 times, with herons standing on their nests on only 2 occasions. When the light was good, I could make an sharp image, even if the birds themselves weren’t doing anything that was necessarily photogenic.
I only had an occasion to photograph a bird flying within range of my camera on 3 occasions and there was never great light when they did. Once a bird was flying away from it’s nest, and me. Another time a bird flew over the swamp from north to south without stopping. There was one occasion, though, when I had a chance to capture an image worthy of some effort.
The bird was approaching from camera right and was flying in my direction. I already had my camera set, but not for this bird because I had been trying to capture a picture of a swan grooming itself. I didn’t have time to adjust my settings (ISO 200, f4.8 at the widest, and 1/1250 sec) and quickly brought up my camera and couldn’t find the bird … I was at 300mm and had to quickly back off and to bring the bird into frame. Then I started to manual focus as I tried to keep the bird on the right side of the (so that it could fly into a nest to its left) while also trying to zoom in. In the end I ended up with a decent composition, great posture, but the focal length was too short and the light not great. Even so, I think it is the best that I’ll be able to do for a while.
I can see myself trying to go back on a warm and sunny day one more time when the sun is out and after the eggs have hatched, when there will necessarily need to be a lot of action in and out of the nests. Maybe then I’ll be up to the challenge.