Avian antics

After an extremely busy day at work today, I decided to head over to Nemesis Pond after work to unwind and take some photos. I wasn't expecting all that much, just hoping to find a few things to photograph so I'd have something to put in the blog, but it turned out to be a fairly active evening over there. The swallows were out in full force, swooping and skimming along the surface of the pond. For obvious reasons, it wasn't the easiest thing to get a decent picture of. But I did end up with some images I liked, even if they're not all the clearest shots in the world, thanks to how calm the pond was and the great reflections it provided:







In this one I liked how the wings of the two birds are at the exact opposite points in their flying motion:







I'd like to chalk it up to being tired, but I suspect it's because I was so focused on catching the swallows in action that I never noticed there was a wood duck on the opposite side of the pond until I saw it in some of my downloaded images. Not that I'd have likely gotten a better shot of it than I did here, given the distance and all, but still:



Along with the swallows, the geese were pretty active this evening—three in particular would sporadically chase each other around the pond; the first time it happened they were right in front of me:





One of the geese in a quieter moment action-wise, although you can see by its beak that it was making plenty of noise in the moment I snapped the photo:



This bird was a bit further away from where I stood, but I liked this photo because of how you can see the way it puts its feet down when it comes in for a landing:



An otter also put in a brief appearance, at one point swimming close enough to a goose to... well, goose it. Naturally, I wasn't snapping pics at the moment it made the goose jump, but I did get some shots of it making sure the otter maintained an appropriate distance as it swam on its way:



Finally, I liked this one because you can not only see the otter swimming toward the bottom, but the mama goose keeping an eye on it from the reeds: