{"id":93884,"date":"2021-01-18T06:09:55","date_gmt":"2021-01-18T13:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=93884"},"modified":"2021-01-18T12:22:14","modified_gmt":"2021-01-18T19:22:14","slug":"male-common-merganser-in-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/18\/male-common-merganser-in-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Common Merganser In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

I find photos of ducks in flight difficult to come by and because of their speed mergansers are among the most challenging of all.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Usually I have a tough time getting close to Common Mergansers but four days ago this adult male unexpectedly came in so close he almost filled my viewfinder.<\/p>\n

Black and white birds are difficult to expose properly almost by definition but the unusually brilliant whites of this species make them even more challenging. So I was happy to get a pretty good exposure on him that included his head turned at just the right angle to the sun to light up his iridescent greenish-black head and upper neck. More often than not their head just looks black.<\/p>\n

But I find flight shots of Common Mergansers to be infinitely harder. They’re very fast flyers which makes them tough to track with a long lens and they usually don’t give any indication of imminent takeoff. So 35 minutes after this shot was taken…<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I was delighted to get this pretty decent flight shot of another male as he flew low over the pond. He was one of several males flying in single file and I was able to lock on to him just long enough to get a single sharp photo. All the other shots in the burst were soft, a little or a lot.<\/p>\n

Common Mergansers are fast flyers but the closely related Red-breasted Mergansers are faster. The fastest duck ever recorded was a male Red-breasted Merganser that attained a top airspeed of 100 mph while being pursued by an airplane. This eclipsed the previous duck speed record held by a Canvasback clocked at 72 mph. I don’t see Red-breasted Mergansers all that often but one of my goals is to get a sharp and detailed photo of one in flight.<\/p>\n

Don’t hold your breath.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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