A walk in the park part 1: make way for ducks

A multi-part post? On a Tuesday? Let me explain.

Actually, that would probably take too long. Let me sum up:

I spent the majority of my day today in Bennington, fulfilling my civic duty by serving as a juror in the Bennington District Court. I opted to spend the lunch break outside taking photos, as the court buildings are adjacent to the Bennington Deer Park. Knowing there'd be both ducks and deer to photograph, I brought along my camera. And... well, I may have gone a bit overboard. So I decided to just post the duck photos in this part. As far as I can tell the ducks are all mallards, either females or juveniles—their plumage is pretty similar, although it appears from my reading that usually a female's bill is more orange than a juvenile's. But as I'm by no means an expert, I'm not even going to try and label them as one or the other.

Paddling along:



I liked how the coloring of this photo came out:



I included this one because since it was one I took fairly early on you can still see the duck's head through the water; after about 20 minutes, they'd collectively stirred up so much silt that such shots were no longer possible:





How can you not love it when a bird does something like this right in front of you?









Chatting with its neighbor, apparently:



I've included this photo for one reason and one reason only—so I could say that for this shot I had all my ducks in a row:



Bottoms up:



More wing action:





Loved how they ended up in this curved formation:



Another one I really liked the coloring of:



A very lucky bit of timing, catching the duck's head emerging but not yet breaking the surface tension:



I liked how this reflection turned out:



And I chose this last one because of how well you can see the beads of water on its head:



And that does it for this half. For the rest of today's photos, just click here.