The Weatherman Got It Right

Mallard drake at Humber Bay Park

With a ton of work to do (submissions and new eBook to write) I decided to ignore the weather forecast for today and take some time off to create some fresh waterfowl images at one of my favorite locations, Humber Bay Park on Lake Ontario in Toronto, during the spring migration. The forecast was for snow flurries, sunny periods and windy conditions. Since the weather forecasts are usually wrong anyway, I figured I would make the one hour drive down to Toronto and try my luck. Today the weatherman got it right! I encountered a real mixed bag of weather from brief, but very heavy snow flurry activity followed by clear skies that quickly turned back into snow squalls. I did not find a great assortment of waterfowl today, just some Mallards and a lot of Gadwalls. More Gadwalls than I have ever seen at Humber Bay before, so I spent the day photographing Gadwalls in the various weather elements we were experiencing today. And I never pass up the opportunity to photograph the Ring-billed Gulls at close range while here either. A long time ago, I heard a good bit of advice – take advantage of the common wildlife around your home, because there are other places in this world where they are not so common. For the Ring-billed Gull portrait I applied a touch of Nik Software’s ‘detail extractor’ filter found in Color Efex Pro 4 to bring out some of the detail in the whites of the bird.

When I arrived home at the end of the day, I was greeted by the calls of Red-winged Blackbirds and the first Robin of the year was sitting on my front lawn. Looks like spring is here 🙂

Gadwalls  and falling snow

Gadwall drake preening

Gadwall drake

Ring-billed Gull