anas

Black Duck, aka Brown Duck, Grey Duck, or Wild Duck.

Taken at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline at about 65m. Might be my best American Shoveler photo yet, and I just love those awkward-yet-stately paddle bills. The clear images of the Avocets in their white-n-black was a bonus.

Taken at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline at about 85m. What is it about wigeons being so shy? This lone male Eurasian Wigeon was the only one of his kind we saw in a mixed bunch of American Wigeons, American Avocets, and Northern Shovelers. According to my reading, Eurasian...

Taken at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline at about 100m. This photo was taken with the 1.6x digital tele-converter, so not one of my best, but posting another species of wigeon shortly for an interesting comparison. These wigeons are not as common as the American Coots, Mallards...

Taken at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline (Oakland, CA, USA). Wigeons here have this habit of being very far away from the shoreline or people, so always tricky to get a decent photo.

Taken at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline (Oakland, CA, USA). New to me, or at least insomuch as I had it ID'd as something I hadn't seen before. I suspect I may have misidentified these as another duck and skipped them in the past. That'll teach me.

Taken through a chain-link fence at a marshy pond just inside the border fence for the Oakland International Airport (OAK), along Ron Cowan Parkway. Distance is approximately 50m, using the 1.6x digital teleconverter and external flash. The brightness to the right side of the photo is from...

Taken through a chain-link fence at a marshy pond just inside the border fence for the Oakland International Airport (OAK), along Ron Cowan Parkway. Distance is approximately 50m. This is using the 1.6x digital teledapter and some Photoshop plugin magic to clean-up the photo. Seems these ducks...

Taken at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline at about 15m. The photo doesn't do justice to the iridescence of the male's plumage, which looked like a mint green while we were observing/photographing him.

Taken at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline at about 15m.

Taken at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline at about 20m. Male at left, female at right. My first time seeing or photographing these small ducks. My girlfriend spotted them feeding amongst the willets, almost blending in.

Taken at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline at approximately 35m. I enjoy catching shots if animals "doing things" like this one, quacking at a male not far ahead of her. My first basic attempt to use Topaz DeNoise to clean-up the noise from one of my photos.

Taken at the Shadow Cliffs Regional Recreation Area (Lake Boris) at about 10m. Apparently this is a first for me: for a moment I thought I had misidentified the male (thought it was something other than a mallard), but realized this is the mallard male in eclipse plumage. Never photographed...

Taken at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline. Usually I end-up trying to photograph these fascinating birds at extreme distances, but these were fairly close.

Taken at the Shadow Cliffs Regional Recreation Area (Lake Boris) at about 15m. Caught this male bathing.

Taken at the Shadow Cliffs Regional Recreation Area (Lake Boris) at about 15m. Caught this female bathing. Was struck by the fact that the females apparently do have a tiny bit of green iridescence on the neck.

Taken at Lake Merritt (Oakland, CA, USA) at about 5m. D'aaaaaw!

Taken at the Shadow Cliffs Regional Recreation Area (Lake Boris) at about 5m.

Taken at the Shadow Cliffs Regional Recreation Area (Lake Boris) at about 5m. Duckbutt!

Taken at the Shadow Cliffs Regional Recreation Area (Lake Boris) at about 5m. I have a whole series of photos of these two at 5m to nearly point-blank range I'll share eventually. They were all but oblivious to us while they were feeding, and the setting was lovely.

Taken at the Shadow Cliffs Regional Recreation Area (Lake Boris) at about 30m. QUACK!

Taken at the Shadow Cliffs Regional Recreation Area (Lake Boris) at about 10m. Napping-away in the shade, quite comfortable with us being close because she was on the other side of a small pond.

Taken at the Shadow Cliffs Regional Recreation Area (Lake Boris) at about 20m. This fellow seemed to be bathing. I caught this while he was flapping away to get the water off.

Taken at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline at about 60m. Probably a female Northern Shoveler there in front, but she was too busy looking for food. Last of my first batch photos to be processed from a Camera RAW original. Different view from the flapping one uploaded earlier.