{"id":138733,"date":"2023-07-02T06:10:28","date_gmt":"2023-07-02T12:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=138733"},"modified":"2023-07-02T10:06:00","modified_gmt":"2023-07-02T16:06:00","slug":"drake-cinnamon-teal-puddle-jumping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/02\/drake-cinnamon-teal-puddle-jumping\/","title":{"rendered":"Drake Cinnamon Teal ‘Puddle Jumping’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A puddle jumper doing what puddle jumpers do.<\/p>\n

Puddle ducks, also known as dabblers, are those that feed in shallow water, don’t dive, and have large wings relative to body size so they take off vertically from land or water rather than needing the long takeoff “runway” required by diving ducks. Puddle ducks include Mallards, Gadwalls, widgeons, pintails, shovelers, Wood Ducks, and teals – including Cinnamon Teals.<\/p>\n

When I was growing up in Montana we used to call puddle ducks “puddle jumpers” because when disturbed they would jump from one prairie pothole to another. Five days ago, along the approach road to Bear River MBR, I documented a drake Cinnamon Teal doing just that – puddle jumping.<\/p>\n

All ten of the photos in the series below are sequential without any skips.<\/p>\n

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I missed his vertical takeoff because the small puddle he was on was completely hidden by vegetation, so I didn’t even know he was there. This is the first shot I got of him after he launched.<\/p>\n

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Apparently he didn’t like how close I was so he wanted to put some space between us. His intended destination was another small puddle, perhaps 50′ away, but to get there he had to clear a couple of large patches of white-flowering plants. He didn’t clear them by much.<\/p>\n

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If anyone knows what these plants are, please let me know in the comments. I have no idea and I’m curious.<\/p>\n

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At times he seemed to be almost touching some of the flowers.<\/p>\n

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This shot shows his bright iridescent bronze-green speculum better than any other in the series. There’s a fly of some kind below the tip of his right wing and if you look very closely there’s also a mosquito or midge very close to the trailing edge of the same wing. It’s tiny.<\/p>\n

Here he’s cleared the first patch of flowers but…<\/p>\n

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there was another patch of them directly in front of him.<\/p>\n

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OK, now he’s mostly in the clear so he can begin…<\/p>\n

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his descent.<\/p>\n

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Putting on the air brakes as he approaches the puddle.<\/p>\n

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This flight posture is almost identical to the previous one so I’ve cropped this last photo with the teal much smaller in the frame to allow us to see part of the puddle he was flying to. This is the last shot I got before I completely lost focus on him.<\/p>\n

In the past, Cinnamon Teals in flight have been a very difficult subject for me to get sharp so I was pretty happy to get as many sequential sharp photos of this drake as I did. The Canon R5 deserves a significant portion of the credit.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Notes: <\/em><\/p>\n