Maplewoood Nature Center Ducklings

Today has not been a very good day for me. First off the weather has been miserable all day, with cold temps and off and on snow/rain/sleet and ice. Then things have just been breaking out of the blue and the finally is when I clipped the corner of our garage when pulling in and broke the plastic cover over my headlight.
So I decided to post something that would be cute and upbeat so that it might help to cheer me up.
So here are some pics of a couple of baby ducklings that I photographed back on August 18th at the Maplewood Nature Center.
I am not sure what type of ducks that they were, since many female ducks look similar and mom was the only parental supervision around.
One thing that is very noticeable to me when I look at these pics is the difference in light that we have here in Minnesota during the summer compared to what we get in the winter. The light in these pics looks so vibrant and warm.

During the winter we typically have a lot of overcast grey skies. This is the thing that I dislike most about winter in my part of the world. When we do get clear skies it is usually extremely cold and that has its own effect on light. One day when I retire, if I ever can retire, hope that I can spend my winters down in Florida, south Texas, New Mexico and California.

Bass Ponds Racing

Down by the river a mother duck was heading out for a stroll with her brood.
I thought that it was funny watching them getting ready. It reminded me of a group of runners at the starting line of a marathon getting ready. A couple of them are stretching while one is ready to go and another is checking out the competition.
Then they are off. Like little Nascars jockeying for position behind mom the pace car.

It is kind of funny that I thought of these two analogies when I saw these ducks since I am not a runner, though I do spend a bit of time hiking around parks, and I am not a big Nascar fan.

Crex part 2

Here are some of the other pictures that we took on June 17th. We did see a pair of common loons. Common loons are the state bird of Minnesota and one of my favorite waterfowl. We were hoping to see some loon chicks but there were none that we could find.
The problem with photographing loons is getting the red eye to show up on the black head. It was particularly hard on this occasion because it was pretty cloudy in the morning when we saw the loons. We did find a duck with some chicks. Unfortunately I have a hard time identifying many of the female ducks since many look the same. If anyone knows what type this is please feel free to post in the comment section.There were a few heron and egrets out wading in the shallows
We also saw quite a few butterfly.

My wife got some great shots of a monarch on matching orange flowers.
She also got some great shots of a white tail doe and fawn.

While I was setting up my tripod to get some close ups she was clicking away. Good thing too because the doe got a little worried about us watching and led the fawn away before I got completely set up.
Typical. Oh well, we will try going back in a couple of weeks and maybe my luck will be a little bit better.