Finally, the Greater Snow Geese had arrived in sufficient numbers at Cap Tourmente and are munching away in the fields before they leave for their second leg of migration to the north in a few days.

The geese have been in the St. Lawrence River valley for over a month now, and have just this weekend invaded the fields of Cap Tourmente in great numbers.

Although the geese were very cooperative photography-wise (taking poses, location, direction of wind and direction of sun into consideration), there was one big annoying problem.

This weekend, there was a lot of hot/cold air conditions which caused a lot of light diffraction. The air, composed of two densities mixing together causes light to bend. This caused the background to be not only out of focus, but really distorted. This problem is more pronounced when using zoom lenses - the farther the light has to penetrate this type of air, the more distortion.

It was more pronounced Saturday, but less so this morning.

With this photo of geese landing amongst friends, I used a Gaussian blur filter to blur away the distortions in the background.

Greater Snow Geese are naturally white, but at Cap Tourmente, they are environmentally stained rust-colour. This is due to iron minerals staining their feathers as they burrow their heads and necks deep into mud at low tide in search of their favourite food, the roots of an aquatic plant called Schoenoplectus pungens, or Scirpe d'Amérique in French.

Cheers,

Mike