Night Heron, fishing on the Charles

I live very near to the Charles River in Waltham and the pathway along it is a favorite walking route and photography location. The bird above is a Night Heron and a frequent visitor to this area of the Charles. He can often be seen either just below the dam in Waltham or further down on one of the many small waterfalls. If you are careful you can get pretty close to these birds but if you are too obvious they will fly off. It took me about a half hour to creep close enough to this Night Heron to get this shot. I was still using a 70-200mm lens for this shot but it enabled me to get a very intimate shot of this shy bird.

Foggy view of reservoir in Wales

I lived the first 18 years of my life in South Wales, UK. It is a very beautiful area with rugged landscapes, many sheep farms and castles dating back to the 8th century and earlier. As much as this might look like a castle in some ways the towers you see are inspection towers for a reservoir. The name of the reservoir is Llandegffed Reservoir and is about 10 minutes from where I grew up. It is in a valley surrounded by sheep farms. On some occasions, like the day this picture was taken, there is a thick fog that envelops the valley. If you look closely at the top of the larger tower you will see cormorants that are spreading their wings and catching the sun. This was one of over 50 pictures I took that day of the reservoir but this was my favorite.

It was taken with a 70-200mm lens with a 1.4x extender attached and a Canon 5D. I needed the extra length to get the angle I was looking for that gave me this background. Other angles would have given many more trees in the background which would be distracting.

It’s that time of year again

Aside from shooting from a plane I also shoot a lot of images from a kayak. This gives me a great perspective on many of the birds that populate local rivers as you are so close to their level. I often kayak the same stretch of the Charles River and have become very familiar with its inhabitants. There are a pair of swans that nest every year in the same spot and usually bring four or five signets into the world. Occasionally I am lucky enough to get up close to these little guys without disturbing their parents too much. This allows me to get very intimate images of their care, feeding and preening. This one certainly has an ahhhh factor about it.