Birding Waughop and Titlow

Having finished my gardening chores the day before, I couldn’t resist going out birding again on Wednesday, this time to Waughop Lake and Titlow. Unfortunately, the highlight of the day was the sunshine and an opportunity to talk to a photographer I’d not met before.

Waughop was particularly dead, with a few American Coots and Mallards hanging around the edge of the pond and a raft of Northern Shovelers

pair of Norhern Shovelers

floating in the middle of the lake along with some Ring-Necked Ducks too far out to get a shot even with a 560mm telephoto.

Birding was a bit better at Titlow where I noted the return of the Widgeons like this female.

female Widgeon

The highlight of the day, bird-wise, though would have to be a pair of Hooded Mergansers. I’m not sure if this guy was drying out after preening or displaying his manhood,

Hooded Merganser

but I appreciated the chance to get something other than another shot of a duck just floating.

Hooded Merganser

The real entertainment of the day, though, was watching this Merganser try to slink away with this rather large fish which was obviously far too big to swallow but he didn’t want to share.

Hooded Merganser with fish

Photographically it was a wasted day. I’ve been trying to sort through the thousands of shots residing on my hard drive(s), deleting shot after shot that’s not as good as other shots for weeks now. At times it seems like a never-ending job, like cleaning a house or cooking a meal, but it did make me resolve to immediately sort through every future shoot, deleting those that aren’t as good as previous shots of the same birds. I deleted every shot taken during the day even these after I’d posted them to my blog.

4 thoughts on “Birding Waughop and Titlow”

  1. Your last paragraph is right where I live these days. I bought a new 13″ Retina MBP with the 768GB SSD (huge $$$ premium) just so I could move my Aperture library onto it. Then I realized that most of those pictures aren’t what you’d call “keepers.” So I moved the library onto an external FW 800 drive, so I have access to them when I want them, and declared photo bankruptcy! Now I try to ruthlessly delete pictures right after I load them. The Retina display really helps that effort, because if a shot is out of focus, boy can you tell! And even the soft ones are readily apparent.

    I find it’s still hard to delete pictures of people, but it’s getting easier.

    1. Occasionally as I’m browsing the TV I stop at one of those programs depicting “hoarders” and I’ve been using those as motivation to edit my photos more assiduously.

      That way I don’t have to worry about the person who will have to look at my hard drive after I’m dead and try to decide if there was anything worth keeping

        1. I used to feel that way and these shots are probably better than the ones I took when I started since both my equipment and my techniques have improved.

          It’s when you go back after shooting the same birds for several years that you realize that most of those old shots aren’t nearly good enough to still keep.

Comments are closed.