On the water again

 

A nice holiday weekend lies behind us. The weather was mild, but not hot, and we took the kayaks to the Green Island Wetland Preserve for some paddling and exploring new routes in this backwater area of the Mississippi. The water level in the river was still way above normal, which is not necessarily bad for paddling in the backwaters.

Many birds take care for their offspring and you may not see them much out in the open water. It is always a challenge to take the camera with the long lens into the boat but if everything comes together the results can be very rewarding. Shooting on eye level with a bird that swims or just sits along the shore leads to a more interesting perspective than shooting from an elevated road along the shore.

This pelican didn’t seem to be bothered by my presence as I approached it carefully and with very slow paddle strokes. I really wanted this photo because of the nice background with the blooming bushes and the story it tells about the fact that every island and peninsula is flooded.

Fishing frenzy

 

I have withheld these images from your eyes since last Saturday. A business trip didn’t allow me to work on my photos for a couple nights. I went to the lock and dam in Dubuque and found a group of about 30 American White Pelicans just below the dam at the exit of the lock. It is fascinating to watch these large birds fishing in an almost organized manner.

The second image shows were the difficulties are with this location. The pelicans feed right at the exit of the lock and disappear quite often behind the concrete wall that forms the side of the lock. I don’t like having this wall in the photo and so the edge of the wall is in many pictures almost identical with the left hand side of the photo. This, unfortunately, limits the room for composition sometimes.

However, things develop anyway very fast because the pelicans move constantly around and there were lots of nice gestures of the birds I was able to capture. I shot for about an hour and this was great fun again.  Their bill can hold 3 gallons (~11 liter) of water. After they catch some fish they point the bill downwards, drain the water off, raise the bill and swallow the prey.

We just read in the IOWA OUTDOORS magazine that the pelicans have started to built nesting colonies again on some protected Mississippi islands a little further south from here. It says the population is at about 1,500 pelicans now. They were absent since 1909. I like news like this…