After a long Christmas season I decided that I needed some time outdoors. If you recall, I work two jobs, one in retail. You know how retail is during the Christmas season…it’s NUTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The entire month of December I was working 65-70+ hours per week total between both jobs. So since I was on Christmas break from the university I had most of my days free during the week between Christmas and New Years. I chose to go to Lake Arthur at Moraine State Park.
My first stop was the Old Route 422 boat launch. All that I saw there were Canada geese. In my part of the country it seems that you can’t swing a stick without hitting a Canada goose. Needless to say I won’t shoot pictures of them unless I can get a great shot.
I’ve been going to Moraine since I was a wee lad fishing with my dad. Every now and again I would see a vehicle or two at a part of the lake where there were no roads that I knew of at the time. Well today I found how to get there. I wanted to test the 4WD in my new truck anyway so off I went. I didn’t get any pictures while I was on that road but the truck got muddy so I suppose that you could say it was a fun little ride.
After playing in the mud I moved to the South Shore Recreation Center at Moraine. It’s basically a large swimming and picnic area on the lake shore. There I finally found something worth shooting: Coots and Buffleheads. I had only seen one Coot before and never saw a Bufflehead so it was kind of a treat for me. Both of these species are divers which mean that they dive completely under water to feed. Even though they were both grouped together I mentally separated them and got into the rhythm each was using. The Buffleheads were constantly diving but after watching them for a while I was able to figure out the general area where each would surface again. I was able to do the same thing with the coots and even got some shots of them on land.
After about 250 pictures I decided that it was time to move on. I put the digiscope outfit into the truck and went closer to the main part of the lake. I thought that the flock of 30-40 Coots at my previous stop was a large flock; near the shore on the main part of the lake was a flock that numbered in the hundreds!!!! I grabbed the digiscope from the back of the truck and realized that I wasn’t careful enough when putting it in; the shutter cable release was broken!!! DAMMMMMIITT!!!!!!!!!!! I still used the scope to see what else was there. In addition to the Coots there were Redheads, Canvasbacks and Ringneck ducks to be seen. Oh well.
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