Beaver house and Heron rookery

I set out yesterday morning with the ultimate goal being to find some nesting Great Blue Herons.  My father-in-law gave me the general location so I figured I could find it.  I took the long way and stopped to hike around some gameland trails.  I used only my new 50mm which my polarizer and all my neutral density filters fit happily upon, it was great to get back into some daytime long exposures.   I let the wind ripple the waters around the beaver house while I stretched my exposures to 60+ sec.  The whole time I was scolded loudly by a flock of Canada Geese, not a fan of the annoying honkers.

Spring is technically here but there was very little signs walking through the woods.  I do love bright flowers and green leaves there's something so appealing about last years weeds and other annual growth after being ravaged by winter.

I did finally find the Heron rookery but only after driving past it at 70mph on the freeway.  I doubled back and snapped approx 400 shots (gotta love digital). There has to be at least 25 nests in the tall sycamore trees above a waterway populated by, you guessed it, a flock of Canada Geese that also were very aware of my presence and not too comfortable with it.  The nesting trees are situated perfectly in a ravine next to a bridge on the freeway.  You can position yourself directly across from them and shoot on the same plane.  It pushed my budget Sigma 300mm to it's limits but it performed satisfactorily.  I'll go back in May to try to capture some little fuzzy heads popping out of those nests.

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Cardinals 

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No this is not a new pet.

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Day 2 camping:

Spotted newts (one named Chica), beaver gnawed trees, and cloudy star trails.

The star trail picture is actually the combined frames of the timelapse video (it'd be really cool looking if the blogger video resolution wasn't so crappy, come on over to my house if you really care to see it).

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IR at Lake Travis

Deer are apparently like woodchucks in this neighborhood

Grandpa

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Spent a few minutes shooting the baby sparrow and the leaves at my parent's this evening.  Just more reasons to NEVER leave the camera at home.
Then we went to the opening night of the Thurston Classic hot air balloon festival.  Not as exciting for the kids as they had imagined.  Good photo-ops though

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Took the kiddies on a walk this evening on the same path I took yesterday.

The girl who constantly whines "I'm just not that into Nature, Dad" ended up with two handfuls of frog eggs and we all enjoyed a 30 minute front row performance by a very large beaver.

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Driving the countryside again this evening, down a road I'd never been down.  I stopped to shoot the sunset reflecting off a small pond with a rowboat half sunk on the shore (which now that I'm home looks like crap) and turned around to see these little specks at the treeline.  Out came the telephoto and with the low light I was surprised to get a shot good enough to post (just barely good enough).

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Yesterday, as we were driving out of town and basically the entire way to Chautauqua Lake I was drooling over the beautiful hoarfrost covering all the trees, bushes, everything.  I was extremely irritated that I was not out shooting it this rare and beautiful winter spectacle but instead just driving by it.  If there's anything good about winter photography it's hoarfrost.  And I ignored it to my disadvantage [handpalm]

I decided to wake up early this morning in the hopes of finding more frosty goodness.  Unfortunately, I am a lazy piece of crap and slept until 9.  There wasn't any good frost anyway.

I did finally get myself outside and back to the frozen swamp from Friday.  I went for a short walk into the swamp and the 3 feet of snow.  I thought about putting my knee-high boots on before I ventured out but nah my snow-boots are much warmer and any standing water will be very solid.

Wandering into the swamp, the ice was very firm although the scenery wasn't as photogenic as I had pictured it from the road.   Some wild turkey were pacing around further back in the swamp so I tried to slowly creep up on them.  At about 100 feet from them I was in good shape, they were still unaware of me.  I took a few shots but still wanted to get closer. With another step my foot suddnely sunk into water up to my mid-calf and of course my other foot followed.  Oh yeah, these snow boots are real warm now.  Luckily, I was only uncomfortably far not dangerously far from my car.  My feet had pretty much disappeared by the time I got home but they were still pink and sensation quickly returned.