{"id":4015,"date":"2014-11-29T12:13:58","date_gmt":"2014-11-29T17:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chapspics.com\/blog\/?p=4015"},"modified":"2020-09-04T13:26:01","modified_gmt":"2020-09-04T17:26:01","slug":"close-up-hooded-merganser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chapspics.com\/blog\/close-up-hooded-merganser\/","title":{"rendered":"Close-up Hooded Merganser"},"content":{"rendered":"

As usual, all the ducks swam to the far side of the pond this morning when I arrived. However, because most of the pond is frozen, at least they were limited to the one half of the pond and I pretty much kept sight of them the entire time. After setting up (tripod and flash), my waiting began …<\/p>\n

Every so often a few would move in closer to eye me up, but only to swim back to the rest of the group (I’d say there were about a dozen Mergransers and about a half dozen Black Ducks total). A few new ones would occasionally fly in and join the party.<\/p>\n

At one point I heard something sound like it was getting out of the water about 20 feet away. Next thing I know I hear something in the woods behind me. I turned around and about eight feet away was a Mink! I made a couple noises so it knew I was there and it slowly wandered away. Too bad my camera was setup on the tripod facing the other direction.<\/p>\n

Anywho, I digress, back to the ducks. After about one hour of wishing I had a coffee I heard a duck right along the shoreline but I couldn’t see it. I knew it was very close so I switched the focus limiter switch on my lens to off. A couple seconds later – eureka!<\/p>\n

\"141129_MAS2245-c\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Full frame (no cropping) …<\/p>\n

\"141129_MAS2245\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Note before leaving I ripped out some of the grass along the shoreline which was ruining half my shots (see example below) when the ducks came over to say hi – I’ll be all set tomorrow morning!<\/p>\n

\"141129_MAS2202\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As usual, all the ducks swam to the far side of the pond this morning when I arrived. However, because most of the pond is frozen, at least they were…<\/p>\n

Continue reading …Close-up Hooded Merganser<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4016,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[66],"class_list":["post-4015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ducks","tag-papermill-pond","ratio-3-2","excerpt"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chapspics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chapspics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chapspics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chapspics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chapspics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4015"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/chapspics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6124,"href":"https:\/\/chapspics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015\/revisions\/6124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chapspics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chapspics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chapspics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chapspics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}