This past July during a quick little cottage visit up North, a feathered friend decided to visit and show off his fishing skills. Oddly enough, this happened just a little bit after My Lovely Assistant, a skilled fisher in her own right, had just shoved off in a peddle boat to see if she could catch anything on the lake. There's a bit of a running joke about fish in that lake, mostly because she never seems to find any. The lake is called Lac
Désert, roughly translated to English it becomes Empty Lake. I always thought it was a rather apt name, but the Heron proved me wrong in about five minutes. He swooped in and landed on a rock, just across from the dock I was sitting on. I was trying to take pictures of a dragonfly that was buzzing around so I already had my camera handy. The bird watched me for a little bit while I took a few photographs while he was perched on a rock. I tried not to make any quick movements, which isn't really that difficult of a task for me. After a few moments, he began to slowly walk along the shore, going over and under some branches and past a beaver dam. Then suddenly, BANG! He spiked his head into the water and when he came back up I
saw that he had speared a fish with his beak. It was the first time in three years that I had actually seen a fish come out of that lake. Ever the showman, the Heron took his time to show off his trophy, making sure that I would get a good shot. He then seemed to play with it in his mouth a little bit before gulping it down, and flying away. I feel like I got some pretty nice shots of the whole thing, so here they are for you all to see. The first photograph was taken at f/5.6, 1/640sec, ISO 400 at 300mm. The second photograph was taken at f/5.6, 1/500sec, ISO 400 at 300mm. Here are the rest of the photographs from the fishing session.
f/5.6, 1/640sec, ISO 400 at 300mm
f/6.3, 1/500sec, ISO 400 at 300mm
f/6.3, 1/640sec, ISO 400 at 300mm
f/6.3, 1/400sec, ISO 400 at 300mm
I was a little bit disappointed with the final photo. The head is a little bit blurry. I probably should have shot with a smaller aperture, but ht bird took off kind of abruptly and I didn't have time to switch. It was a pretty cool experience, and I got to see a fish come of the Empty Lake.
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