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<\/p>\nLate yesterday afternoon this thoughtful grebe took pity on me and saved my day at almost the last minute.<\/p>\n
Like usual lately yesterday was heavily overcast and gloomy so bird photography just wasn’t in the cards and I stayed home. But very late in the afternoon the sun came out unexpectedly so I drove down to several nearby ponds to look for cooperative birds. A couple of lazy Pied-billed Grebes were the only interesting birds to come in close but they were lethargic and boring so I was resigned to being skunked of any interesting photos.<\/p>\n
But fairly close to sundown and just before I pulled the plug and headed for home one of the grebes unexpectedly went into a bathing, wing-flapping frenzy in good light and reasonably close.<\/p>\n
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I took over 200 shots of “him” while he was bathing and shaking but he was seldom turned at a good angle to me so this is one of the few photos that had any light in his eye. He was determined to get every last feather wet and I’m sure he succeeded.<\/p>\n
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After his bath it was time for some serious wing-flapping. At least this time he performed at a better angle to me.<\/p>\n
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I took a bunch of shots during the wing-flap but I had the best wing angle in these two. Sometimes in a burst my shutter fires at the most opportune moments and sometimes it doesn’t.<\/p>\n
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Then he settled back into the water and I thought he was done. And he was, for a while.<\/p>\n
At this point a nice gentleman who’d noticed our big lenses sticking out the windows of my pickup came over to talk to us. He wanted to know if we photographed wildlife other than birds. When we said yes he told us about some elk who are apparently easy to photograph up in the mountains in the Park City area.<\/p>\n
But while I was talking to him I kept my eye on the grebe and suddenly he looked like he might perform once again.<\/p>\n
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And he did, with yet another extended wing-flap.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/pied-billed-grebe-8828-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"pied-billed-grebe-8828-ron-dudley\\"")
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And this time I think I got slightly better wing positions and head angles.<\/p>\n
I felt badly because I was firing away with my noisy shutter and my eye glued to the viewfinder of my camera while the gentleman was trying to talk to us. I thought he might think I was being rude but when I apologized and explained he said he fully understood.<\/p>\n
When I have to choose between birds and people I’ll take birds almost every time, even when they’re as friendly as that guy was.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
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Note: I haven’t included my image techs because they were somewhat inappropriate for the situation. Let’s just say I had plenty of shutter speed (ranging from 1\/3200 to 1\/8000).<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Late yesterday afternoon this thoughtful grebe took pity on me and saved my day at almost the last minute.<\/p>\n