Every year, this Mallard pair pays a visit to the small seasonal pond in the back of the house. With the stay-at-home guidelines in this Covid19 times, I'd be home when they came. Still, it took my birder wife to alert me to their presence. So it's another year, another set of Mallard photos.
We used to think mallards mated for life; a quick Google check indicated that they only stay together until the female lays her eggs.
This pond lies behind a crisscrossed thicket of branches so the camera had to be set to Spot focus to shot through the gaps in the thicket. Anticipating the mallard's movement through the thicket is essential since the Minolta 70-210F4 (Beercan) is notoriously slow in grabbing focus. But it's not bad for a 35-year-old lens design that can be had on Kijiji/Craigslist for $100; if you're lucky, you'll get a good copy. All the shots were at the 200 (300mm length for this crop sensor)
This pond lies behind a crisscrossed thicket of branches so the camera had to be set to Spot focus to shot through the gaps in the thicket. Anticipating the mallard's movement through the thicket is essential since the Minolta 70-210F4 (Beercan) is notoriously slow in grabbing focus. But it's not bad for a 35-year-old lens design that can be had on Kijiji/Craigslist for $100; if you're lucky, you'll get a good copy. All the shots were at the 200 (300mm length for this crop sensor)
The mallards were wary of my every movement and since I wasn't behind a duck blind, I had to stand still or move slowly. Both flew away 15 minutes after I started taking the photos.
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