Often I look for new areas to go explore using google maps/earth. Particularly bodies of water and the best way to access them without trespassing. This was how I discovered this little pond tucked away on a walking trail at a nearby park. I found the easiest way to get there was off of my drive home from work. And one day after my shift I stopped by to check it out. I found a good way to get there, a place to park my car and set up right next to the water. So the next Saturday morning I was out at sunrise with my full setup.
I put the Tamron lens on a tripod and brought a folding chair with me. I hunkered down and was out there about half the day all in all. Saw a good bit of wildlife.
But before we get to that, a bit of the landscape.
Canon 5D Mark II w/28-135mm @28 - 1/30 Sec - F4 - ISO 100
The reflection off the still water was very nice. And although now I look back at this image and there’s plenty I would tweak and do differently, at the time this was really the first opportunity I had with a reflection shot.
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @150 - 1/160 Sec - F5 - ISO 250
I also was intrigued by the early morning dew still clinging to the needles on this pine. Enough so to take two different images, one at the short end of the lens range and one at the long end.
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/13 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 100 (Dear past self, why didn’t you use the remote trigger for such a zoom in shot at such a low shutter speed? Sincerely, experienced self)
It wasn’t long until the pond had some visitors. The first of which was actually a fisherman, I assume from the local apartments that were walking distance away. Out in the early AM of this Saturday casting his line on the opposite side of this pond. I say pond as the water was still, I don’t know of a source flow for it but it wasn’t that small. He was probably three or four hundred feet away. Long enough for me to see him with the lens, but as I had no intention of taking pictures of people on this day. I just watched for wildlife and kept an eye on his fishing. He was out for an hour or two, and caught several fish. Releasing all of them.
But my patience was rewarded with another visitor to the pond…
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/250 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
This goose caught my eye, he was by far the largest I’ve seen to date. The picture really doesn’t do it justice because there’s nothing else in frame as a comparison. But what really stood out to me doesn’t come through in the image. That stripe on his head was not the usual white that I’ve seen before. This was a much darker orange color. You can obviously tell it isn’t as white as his hindquarters from the image, but on the day I remember being absolutely floored when I looked through that lens. I had never seen a goose with an orange strip before.
As geese seldom are, this one was not alone. I managed to get a shot of the two of them while the female was doing a bit of a feather ruffling.
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/2000 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
The geese weren’t the only waterfowl at the pond today either. Only there for a few seconds before spotting me, this mallard swam right past at a much closer distance than anything else was getting to me.
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/1600 Sec - F7.1 - ISO 1250
There were other residents of the pond as well. As I was sitting there enjoying the quiet a ripple in the water caught my attention. Unfortunately for me, it was the one thing I was hoping to not run into. A snake was heading straight towards me through the water. Not very large, maybe two feet long. That’s about all I noticed in the split second I looked through the viewfinder. I did take a picture but knowing my phobia, I immediately deleted it when I got home and unloaded the SD card. Even with my rational thinking and proof that they’re more scared of me than I am of it, I do my best to avoid coming across one at all costs. A fool’s hope, I came to realize over time, as I go more and more into their territory. But even still, as I noticed this one and recognized it for what it was I came suddenly to my feet and it swam off in another direction. Probably gave me about 20 or 30 minutes of watching for it and making a lot more noise than I should stomping around and dragging my feet. Hopefully deterring any others that may be about. Eventually I forced myself to think that it would be extremely unlikely for one to come around me and I continued my wildlife watching.
One of the last things I noticed was just how filled with life this pond is, the box turtles were all over. I named the next picture “turtle rock”
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/1600 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 1600
Just in this photo you can see four of them, but there were even more on the other side of the rock, as well as on some other rocks and other dry spots out of the water. There was one bit of wood that stuck up a few feet out of the water in the middle of the pond. I watched as a large turtle climbed up on top of it, only to be harassed by another turtle who was determined to join them. The first turtle already in place was barely able to fit considering their size. I watched for a while until the second turtle upped and shoved the first one off and into the water. I unfortunately didn’t get an image of this happening, as I was focused on another subject.
You see I happened to notice a power line off in the distance, and I had a great vantage point of it. Even if it was a good ways off. I noticed a hawk sitting on the top, watching all around. Probably scoping out an easy meal. Although the pictures of it didn’t come out more than just overall shapes. It really was a long way off. I could make out that it was a hawk sitting there. But inexperienced as I was, all I wanted to do was get a shot of it taking off in flight. So I locked down the tripod, stuck on the remote trigger and waited. Glancing between my phone, because I have a hard time not looking at it, the turtles and the hawk. Eventually I got what I wanted but still basically missed the take off. Just got a very blurry very cropped in with no detail image of a bird of some kind in flight away from the pole. Lesson learned that day for sure.