Sunday afternoon was spent once again on the banks of the Grand River near the small village of Glen Morris, near Brantford, Ontario. The weather was overcast, windy, and chilly at a temperature of about +2 Celcius. However, there was still a lot of activity along the riverbank, with continual flocks of geese and mallards flying up and down the river. A Great Blue Heron put in an appearance, as well as a large hawk with a wingspan of approx 4 feet -- he was clearly keeping an eye on me as he wheeled almost directly overhead. A small herd of whitetail does showed up, likely the same group I photographed at this location over Easter Weekend. Not unduly nervous, they would peer over at me on occasion as I shifted position to get a better shot. With the Grand River between us they must have calculated that they could dash away a lot quicker than I could swim over!

As with last weekend, I used my Canon 40D and 100-400mm Canon telephoto set at Autofocus Points, with Aperture Priority again set to f8.0 to optimize depth of field and sharpness. At first I repeated an ISO of 800 to keep the shutterspeed up, but had to resort to ISO 1600 as the afternoon progressed with daylight slowly fading. (Better to have a bit of electronic "noise" or graininess with a sharper photo at a higher ISO than a blurred, cleaner photo at lower ISO values).

These are just a fraction of the total photos taken. Most came out OK, but I quickly learned that the larger (and slower) geese and herons are much easier to track on the fly than the fast-moving mallards and other ducks!