Ok - still working through the backlog of photos. Today's set comes from our trip to Lake Chautauqua about a month ago. I had hoped for more water birds to photograph (particularly I was hoping for some wading shore birds), but all we really got was gulls and a few mallard females with babies.

For most of the week, the mallard with the babies was very elusive and kept the babies at a good distance. One of the last days of the trip, we woke to the mother repeatedly quacking a weird, sad quack. I went to investigate and discovered that a red-tailed hawk had apparently caught and killed one of the ducklings. As I approached to investigate, I scared the hawk off (unfortunately without any decent photos). However, something about that made the mother duck feel that it was safe to bring her babies in closer to me. For the remainder of the trip, every time I went down by the water, the mallard and her babies would show up and come in much much closer than before. While it is sad that one of the babies died, I guess it is one of those circle-of-life things and the hawk needs to eat too, and the improved photo opportunities it allowed were appreciated.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm, 1/800 sec at f/8. ISO 400. IS Mode 2. RAW processing and cropped in Adobe Camera Raw.

Thanks for stopping by.

- Bill