Even with limited time, spending an hour birding at LaSalle Park photographing waterfowl can be productive. This article shares some images I captured on Wednesday afternoon.

I decided to do a quick visit to LaSalle Park with the hopes of capturing some usable photographs that I could add ‘at the last minute’ to my Photographing Birds, Bugs & Butterflies presentation to the Grimsby Photography Group. It is always wonderful when Mother Nature cooperates!

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

There were a few ducks and swan along the shoreline and I noticed a Wood Duck close in to shore. I managed to capture a number of images of this beautiful specimen.

I shot between 2:30pm and 3:30pm so the late fall sun was already low in the sky, giving me some very nice light.

I’ve never observed a Wood Duck being aggressive with another bird, but this one did go after a much larger Mallard.

I haven’t been out to photograph birds for a while due to my hectic schedule and I quickly discovered that I was pretty rusty. I was able to get a usable image of a duck coming in to land.

I also captured a decent AF-C run of a duck rising out of the water as it vigorously flapped its wings.

I was shooting in Manual mode with Auto-ISO 160-3200 which is why there is a slight difference in ISO between images in the same AF-C run.

Ducks bathing can often make for some interesting images as seen in the photographs above and below.

Getting some nice light shining on a duck as it lands always helps to accentuate the water splash and droplets as you can see in the following image.

I spent most of my limited time photographing the Wood Duck and some of the Mallards, but did manage an image of another visitor to LaSalle Park.

Technical Note:
All photographs were captured hand-held in available light using Nikon 1 gear as per the EXIF data. Images used in this article were produced from RAW files using my standard process of DxO OpticsPro 11, CS6 and the Nik Collection.

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