Spring is Here - Late August Weekend of Daffodils and Birding

The weather's been a nice and balmy 20-22 C this weekend here this weekend - perfect weather to get out and about to enjoy the daffodils and some bird stalking!

Autumn Colours in Hagley Park

This afternoon, I took a good long walk through Hagley Park to capture the trees in their full autumn splendor. This follows on from another long walk I had yesterday afternoon at Travis Wetland park (I'm planning on having a post up on that up shortly too). It's been really nice weather wise this long weekend (Anzac Day this year fell on Saturday, 100 years since the tragedy at Gallipoli, leading to a "Mondayised" holiday), with temperatures in the mid twenties, and mostly-sunny weather.

A walk around Riccarton House gardens

With the nice fine weather today, I spent some time outside walking around the Riccarton House gardens - the first time I've been there since the earthquake remediation works were completed.

Duckling

Today I found this duckling wandering by itself quite close to a car parking area - quite a sizable distance, especially for such a young one who can't even really walk steadily. It's perhaps the closest I've managed to get to one (the mother duck usually intervenes, if the flock don't run away first).

Weekend Outings - Ilam Homestead

The weather was nice and warm on Saturday afternoon, so I went out for a bit of a walk. Perhaps not such a great time for photos (being just after lunchtime with light), but on the other hand, it lends itself nicely to some dramatic results at times...

Duckings...

Spring Sights...

Over the past month and a bit, I've been quite busy with Uni stuff, possibly working on far too many interesting things at a time, so it's been a bit quiet around here. Combined with having had all the concrete around our house being dug up and relaid over a several week period, it's meant that I've nearly missed out on getting out amongst the spring flowers this year. Then again, apparently that's quite a common complaint from many people round these parts atm, so at least I'm not alone in that respect...

Ducklings Extravaganza

The weather over the first half of the weekend was really nice, that it would be a shame if I didn't try to take advantage of it and take some more photos. However, since the silvereyes have still not showed up in my garden within lens-range as the bottlebrush is still not totally flowering yet, and I was sick of seeing or shooting the blackbirds which have begun to rule our garden, it was time to take some more duck (and specifically duckling) photos!

These were some of my favourite shots, but there were some other cute ones...

Monday is Duck Snapping Day

Seeing as I had some time this afternoon, I wandered over to the Ilam Homestead to take some more duck photos, especially those of some ducklings. And I wasn't disappointed!

"Walk the walk, quack the quack. We copy-duck what our mummy does and says"

My favourite shot of the day. Now that I'm starting to get familiar with this camera and some of the settings, I started trying to get closer than I had done in previous encounters. Of course, mummy duck was a bit worried, but not that much as these ducklings aren't that young + vulnerable now I'd like to think.

Duck Shooting Again

The weather today proved to be absolutely outstanding again, the ducks were out (loud and clear too) in force, so what a great opportunity to try a spot of duck photography with my 7D. Indeed, bird photography was the thing that got me hooked with taking photos of stuff, and, in lieu of a long telephoto + sporadically available subjects, duck shooting has been my main target in this area so far due to their size and ready availability.

So, armed with camera in hand, and having scoped out some clusters all morning without a camera around (I missed an interesting clash between a bossy magpie and a group of ducks, with two of the ducks being frightened off, but the last one holding its ground and quacking loudly until the magpie left).

Without further ado, let the pictures speak for themselves.

From Spring Ducks 2010

This is one of my favourite shots of the day. There are few more of these ducklings inside...

Duck Shooting Season

From Ducks 2010

It's a pity that these ended up a bit OOF (out-of-focus) + some camera shake (though not as bad as sometimes, as is usual for this P&S camera)