Feeding Ducks in Winter

Yesterday I had a strange experience...
Click Below to read about it.

By 4pm I was burnt out on homework and tired of huddling over my little electric room heater. I tugged on my younger brother's ski pants, laced up my snow boots, and grabbed my 35-70mm for a photography break. My mother (the Instagram hero) and I braved the day's knee-high snow drifts with our cameras slung over our shoulders. We drove down to the little wooded pond behind the high school. During the summer, the pond is popular for fishing and feeding ducks. So popular, that the ducks are often overfed and hard to coax in for stale bits of bread. Thanks to the unseasonable warmth of the week the pond had thawed and when we arrived, the surface was cluttered with a chilly flock of ducks. 

Things quickly got kind of weird. The hungry ducks saw us hop out of our suburban and immediately thought that we were bringing the bread they were missing so much during the off-season. 

The hungriest and most outgoing of the flock was the single tall white goose. She marched boldly up to us through the snow, honking her greeting, nipping at our hands and jacket zippers. She stayed by us during our entire visit, inspecting our lens and letting us pet her damp down. Her ease allowed me to take some really close, really unusual goose portraits. 

In spite of their strangeness, I really like these odd photos. Macro shots of animals, especially wild geese, are rare. It's nice to see nature from a new perspective. 

xxx.