Saturday I wanted to do some hiking and some photography. So I borrowed a friends 4runner and headed up to Sylvan Lake State Park outside of Eagle Co. It was rained on and off for the first few hours I was there. Not too hard just a slight rain. Because of this I walked along the creeks and took photographs of the water.
In the afternoon the sun came out for a couple of hours. After I had taken all of the landscape photographs I wanted, I switched lenses to my 300mm with the 1.4x teleconverter to capture some of the birds I had seen flying around the lake.
I love this bird with his Mohawk and soul patch 🙂 .
This is actually the bird I saw that made me want to run back to the car and switch lenses. I’ve never seen one this yellow before and was glad I was able to find him again and take his portrait!
I find all black birds to be difficult to photograph with any detail. If the lighting isn’t coming from the right direction the black feathers just blend together. This guy landed on the tree next to me. The sun was coming a little from behind and to the side highlighting his features.
I spent some time standing still photographing this little guy. He was very timid at first just sticking his head out.
The longer I stood there the more he realized that I wasn’t going to hurt him and he came out of his hole to wander around it eating.
I’m not sure why I didn’t realize this before, but I didn’t know these little guys were herbivores. I think if I would have thought about it, I would have realized this since other squirrels eat nuts and seeds. I was just fascinated that they also graze on grasses.
It seems like whenever I go to take wildlife shots, this red shouldered blackbird is one of the more common birds I see. Because of this, I felt it only fair to include one in my photographs of the day.
I could hear this little guy singing for quite a while before I located him at the very top of a tall pine tree.
The fishing was pretty good around the lake. There were families fishing with salmon eggs and spinners. But there were also some fly fisherman wading in the shallows.
I know when my friend Matt sees these photographs, he will be extra disappointed that I didn’t do any fishing.
I love the detail and the bokeh you can get in a shot with the 300mm lens. I love downed old trees where the root are polished and sticking out like a fan.
Well I hope you have enjoyed these shots. All of the shots in the post today were taken with the Nikon 300mm lens.
