|
It's Not Easy Being Green
Familiarity breeds contempt. Or at least apathy.
Take the mallard, they're a staple of every little duck pond and city park, beggars for handouts of bread and cracked corn. No birder gets excited at the sight of a mallard, but I find them beautiful — the resplendent green heads of the males, which can also look blue or even purple in the right angle of light. I hope these pictures show the uncommon beauty in these common ducks. |
|
|
|
Plain and Pretty
As hard as it can be to make a nice photograph of something as common as a male mallard, it's even worse when it comes to the females, which are just as common but lack the beautiful green heads. One of the nice things about photographing at a duck pond like Portland's Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens is not just that you get to watch the ducks up close, and not just that you can choose nice backgrounds that reflect into the water, but also that you can spend enough time in one spot and observe their behavior.
I'm always fascinated by how animals have adapted to tasks that we'd solve with our dextrous hands and opposable thumbs and prehensile tails, like this preening female who cleans her feathers by passing them through her bill. |
|
Impressions
This picture was taken of a fairly tame male in the heart of Portland at Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens. A big fountain was ruining the quiet waters I had hoped to photograph, but in this one small area the water reflected just right to give an impressionistic look thanks to the overlapping ripples and reflected colors of the foliage.
Once I found my background, it was a matter of waiting to see if a duck would swim through it. Most of them avoided the area, but this male finally obliged for one brief moment. A fence precluded getting a lower angle on the shot, but I still like the colors that surround this common beauty. |