Monday, July 17, 2017

Ducks In The Water

I saw some ducks recently in a swampy pond at Deer Creek nature area. You might think that's no big deal, but it really is to me. Let me tell you why.

For some reason, I don't see many ducks around here. There is a lot of water here, but none that water birds really like to visit very much, except this one place. So far every time I've visited this pond I've seen water birds of some sort. But nowhere else.

Until just recently I usually forget this place, but I'll be visiting very often from now on just so I can get some good bird pictures. These today are far from my best. Next time I'll have to try to get a little closer so I get some actually good pictures for you.

The one thing that I did find out was that these ducks aren't the usual kind I get. Usually, my ducks are the standard Mallards that I see a lot. These ducks are clearly not Mallards.

From what I can tell these appear to be Wood Ducks. You can't get a good look at them from my pictures, but the head of the mother seems to give away the identity.

I have a new episode of Rat TV for you today! You'll like this video of Ducks In The Water because I made it short enough to keep you happy. I'm extra pleased with this one because I used a new video editor on it. Lightworks is my new video editor. Once I learned a little about how to use it I'm very happy with how my first video turned out.

This video of the ducks was actually two videos that I took, and I needed to merge them into one. For awhile before this, I was just uploading my videos straight to Youtube. I've never been happy with that. Even though my videos aren't much, I still like to enhance them just a bit.

The picture above is a screenshot I took from the video. I added the picture in at the last moment. I used to get pictures like this years ago in an old piece of software I used to use for my videos. I wanted to see if I could do it again now. The good news is that I can now do it again. So now even if my other pictures don't satisfy me enough, I can still get some things from the videos.

I watched this family of ducks disappear into the weeds three times. At first, I thought they were two different groups, but after looking at the pictures they appeared too similar to be different ducks.

I once saw an Egret in this pond so I know other birds come here too. I didn't have my camera with me back then, but I'll be sure to have it every time from now on. And I think I'll visit this place again this weekend to see what's going on. Who knows what I might find. I'll talk to you later.

4 comments:

  1. Looks like a mother with juveniles. The head bobbing motion is curious. I've not seen it done as often by one duck. Great video..

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  2. Well they are certainly moving right along in that water. They must be in a hurry to get somewhere.

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  3. How cool that you got to take some video of the ducks! Looks like a cute little family to me.

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