All week I'd been thinking of taking a suitable camera/lens combo to a bird stand I found during last week's nature hike. I wanted sunny skies and 70 degrees - but would accept 50. Maybe 40. It's January. I'd been looking at the Weather Channel website all week. Sunny skies from 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Wind around 5 MPH. Whoo Hoo! Temp - 18 at 8:00 AM. 24 at noon. No one said this would be easy.
There were multiple objectives for today's outing. First - birds. I'll settle for birds at rest - or not in flight. Second objective was to work with a monopod. A late entry for the third objective was to say warm.
Woke up this morning to cloudy skies. Dammit. And 18 degrees. Well, they got that part right. Dammit.
Ten o'clock arrived, so did the sunny skies and 20 degrees. Time to go.
I found a lot of robins in the bird stand. I took multiple photos of the robins that would be later deleted. Technically OK, but they could have been seagulls and been just as interesting. Practice. What I did find out was using the monopod was easy. But getting it there and walking around with it ain't fun. Logistics.
I took the monopod back to the truck, then took off for other parts of the park. The park paths were covered with ice, but the sides were OK with a crusty snow or solid ground. Still had to look down a lot to stay off the ice. But I wanted to keep my eyes to the skies. Looking for anything in the trees. I wasn't expecting to find...
Squirrels.
The squirrels I saw must have been deaf. I was crunching on lots of snow. So I was off the walking path, walking in the snow, out of the ice, looking down. I stopped at some point to scan the trees, and this one couldn't have been more than 20 feet away. Sitting in a tree, doing its thing. Eating. And keeping one eye on me.
OK, its a squirrel, but.... That D850 takes a good shot when coupled with the 200-500 lens. This was hand held. Close enough to see the nose whiskers. I'm good with that.
I tried to find a way around the squirrel without disturbing it. No luck. When I did get by, the squirrel moved from the tree, crossing the path above my head. Not sure what the squirrel was thinking. There were many possibilities. Like, I got you pegged man. Or real nature photographers use Canon. Loser.
Still lots of great detail. Love it when the sun hits the area.
And another squirrel saw me coming. I thought it was yelling at me, but just was carrying around lunch.
You can miss a lot when you have to keep your eyes on the path. So stop and look up every once in a while.
I wanted to make one last pass through the bird stand before calling it a day. This was a little past noon. No activity at all. Squirrels must have warned them. But I didn't leave empty handed. I saw a few deer in a clearing just off the path. And then I saw this framed shot.
I didn't notice it at the time, but the front legs have something odd going on. There are some knees not going in the right direction. Do I need a Bernie in a chair in front of the deer?
Good time to get out of the house. Turned out to be a nice day to walk around. Close to noon probably isn't a good bird hour. Needs to be in the 8 to 9 area. My guess. Thankfully there are more weekends coming up.
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