"Out & About" Photo Blog: 2nd Marsh -- January 14th, 2013

It was time to get out in nature again. With the very mild weather we've been having, I thought I'd go to the marsh to see if the beavers were out & about. The bay is mostly open water. One beaver surfaced for few seconds, then he slipped back below the water. A real contrast to the day I saw half a dozen. Such is nature.

A sky full of geese is a treat any day but as the experts say, on an overcast day try to keep the sky out of your pictures... the skies will be featureless and bald. This shot shows why they say that, but if you want a shot of geese in the sky, you don't have any choice.

To make matters worse, there's a good chance of getting chromatic aberration in the shot as I did here. Maybe I should invest in a more expensive lens.

We're lucky today. If you want to take the time, just put in a new sky using Photoshop. I did this in a couple minutes but it's a poor job. Spend 15-30 minutes and you could do a good job. This shot just isn't worth investing that much time though. Most aren't in fact.

A Mute Swan relaxes on the ice in the bay while a pair of Trumpeters swim about.

Not sure what happened here but there's obviously a story. The longer feathers are about a foot long... not sure what they'd be from. Crow? Raven?

A very poor shot but you have to take what you get some days. I think swans are the most beautiful of all birds in flight... large, elegant & graceful. They make the rest look ordinary in my eyes.

These Mutes had this corner of the lake to themselves. Most often it's gulls or ducks that you find on the lake.

Contrasty light sometimes adds to a scene. This is Farewell Creek entering Lake Ontario.

Farewell Creek alongside the berm.

There's lots of brown this time of year.

But with all the snow gone, there's lots of green too. It's green we wouldn't normally see until the spring when the snow disappears, but a preview a couple months early is nice to see.