One evening this spring in Hoquiam, Wash., on a quest for some wildlife photos, I found cover on the banks of a tidal inlet on the Grays Harbor bay.
A great blue heron perched on one of the dock pilings, and I almost got a shot of it.
There was more than one heron out that evening. This one soared high above, tracking the bay from east to west.
The geese were more amenable to photographs ... or just slower to get away.
In the last photo above, you can see the heron I flushed off the dock piling, to the left of the seagulls on the tip of Rennie Island.
A couple of starlings foraged on the mudflats.
High above, at the limits of my 300mm zoom, two birds engaged in some kind of tussle. Seeing a white or light-colored head, I first thought a bald eagle was chasing a crow or some other small bird. But in the blown up photo, it appears to be a pair of raptors. I still can't quite tell if they are eagles. They could be ospreys; there is a nesting pair with a home atop a telephone pole about two miles from this spot on the bay.
A flock of cormorants winged past the mouth of the inlet and out of sight.
In the grass at the top of the bank behind me, a tiny bird presented a silhouette.
Then the star of this post made its appearance. It perched on a dock piling directly across from me, seemingly just to check me out.
In spite of these great closeups, and a search of the Cornell Lab's bird guide All About Birds, I hesitate to identify the bird. It could be a wren, a thrush, some kind of sparrow ... or something else entirely!
The difficulty lies in the number of variations possible for some birds, between nonbreeding and breeding adults, juveniles and adults, and so forth. I'm really not sure how anyone could be certain of a bird ID with similar-looking small birds, without some kind of genetic analysis.
At any rate, I had a nice visit with the bird before it flitted off. Then I returned my attention to the tiny silhouette behind me.
When reviewing these photographs, I thought at first that the bird in the grass and the one on the dock piling might be the same bird. But close inspection of this last photo reveals a yellow beak, and the one on the dock piling had a black one.
All in all, this trip to the bay was a successful second or third outing with my new 75mm-300mm zoom lens. I continue to be thrilled with the new capabilities ... I really can do some wildlife photography, with practice.
For landscape photography, I'm finding that the lens isn't great. I just don't get enough of the foreground at 75mm. I'll either have to continue to practice a new way to frame up the landscape, by picking a spot farther out as a place to stand, so to speak, or I'll have to get comfortable with switching lenses in the field. So far I've been hesitant, just because I don't want to get dust on the sensor. But I suppose dust on the sensor isn't the end of the world ... I can just learn how to clean it.
This outing was three weeks ago, and I haven't been out for photos since. I'm definitely getting the itch.
Stay tuned!