I love birds.
That’s not something I thought I’d ever say—not that I hated birds, rather, I never thought they’d climb so high on my list of favorite animals!
I also love photographing wildlife, and wildlife photography depends on location, stealth, season, and a little bit of luck. With all these elements, I often find myself in locations full of birds (and no matter the season, birds are always around), with the stealth and luck to capture them too.
Every time I upload my SD card, there’s a photo-dump of bird pictures, so I thought why not share them?!
Specifically, I thought I’d share my duck and goose photos.
There’s a body of freshwater I go to often for photography—it’s teeming with birds and frogs, and on a rare occasion I’ve seen muskrats. I even spotted a coyote once!
From my observation, there’s an avian population (or at least a consistent rotation of visitors) of Canadian geese, mallards, blue-winged teals, American coots, blue herons, green herons, the occasional great egret, kingfishers, red-winged blackbirds, house finches, robins, occasional turkey vultures, and many more small birds and birds of prey that I haven’t identified hanging around these waters.
Canadian geese and mallards are the most abundant and frequent visitors to these waters, so I’ve captured them the most. The following are some of my best and favorite duck and goose shots I’ve taken (plus a bonus heron photo).
December 28th, 2024
I had the immense fortune to acquire a telephoto lens last December, and I was so excited to try it out! However, it was rainy and cold on the day that I got my lens, so I had to wait two whole days to try it out. Agonizing!
Once the wait was over, I captured a magical photo. I’m still so surprised and blessed that I captured it: geese in flight!
I went to the pond that I often try avian photography at and saw a flock of geese swimming around. Not long after snapping a few photos of them in the water, they took off! This was the only photo I took of them in-flight that turned out.
March 26th, 2025
This March, a family member texted me that a duck couple might be nesting at my favorite photography spot.
Yes! Sign me up! I love seeing tiny little puffball duckling in the springtime.
I rushed over to the water, immediately spotting the duck couple. The ducks were taking a little nap together! Look at how cute they are!
April 12th, 2025
Another day that I went to the water, I saw some geese bathing and hanging out—I was able to capture photos of them livin’ life.
This couple was interesting to capture. I was able to get some really cool photos of these geese bathing, then honking!
In the first photo plus it’s zoom-in, you can see how water repellant goose coats are!
April 13th, 2025
Over the weeks, I began to doubt that the napping duck couple nested in the cattails—I never saw a cluster of eggs there, nor the mama duck coming back regularly to sit in that spot. One day, I even saw a green heron camping out on the alleged nest to hunt fish! The cattails behind the green heron were trampled to a point where it wouldn’t be a very comfortable nesting site anymore.
April 18th, 2025
Several days after capturing a green heron on the hunt, I saw something I’d never seen in-person before: a blue-winged teal!
Blue-winged teals are a variety of duck, and this one was a male. I don’t know many duck varieties off the top of my head, so I was absolutely enamored when I spotted this little guy for the first time–who was he?
May 10th, 2025
As I continued to wonder about the mallard couple or whether any duck would bring their babies to my favorite waters this year, I saw a wonderful sight: ducklings!
I also saw an entire duck family!
Ducks mate for life, but male parenting behavior is absent: ducks will mate (and they mate for life), but the males will leave the females to raise the ducklings on their own then return to the female later1. Therefore, seeing a full mallard family was shocking to me.
This duck family of ten were nestled on the bank, taking a nap together.
May 17th, 2025
A week after spotting the duck family, I saw a mama at the water with BIG babies! My assumption is that this is the same mama and babies from the photo of the complete family—there’s eight babies in total just like the last photo, it may not be improbable that those babies grew so much in a week, and I’ve not seen multiple mama & duckling pairs at this water at the same time as one another if there’s more than one duck family that forages here.
And That’s It!
I have more bird photos than these, but it’d make for a very long blog post if I packed all of them in, so that’s all for now!
Birds are such fascinating little creatures, full of personality and interesting behaviors. I’m really happy taking bird photos, and I’m looking forward to sharing more of them in the future.
P.S. I’ll be sure to give updates on the baby ducks if I see them again.
If you’d like to see some of the photos from this blog post in better quality, check out my photography portfolio on this website!
References
1 Tucker, Katie. “Mallard Annual Life Cycle.” Ducks Unlimited, 12 February 2024, https://www.ducks.org/conservation/waterfowl-research-science/mallard-annual-life-cycle
Accessed 27 May 2025.
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