Very Cold Morning at Bombay Hook NWR.

[David_MC]

Headed up to Bombay Hook this morning for some wildlife photography on a very cold morning (car thermometer read 14F or -10C). Not too many critters out unfortunately, but the Northern Mockingbirds and Great Blue Herons are always willing to oblige (or at least, don't care about people photographing them).

1)
DSCF8017 by David Covarrubias, on Flickr

2)
DSCF8024 by David Covarrubias, on Flickr

3)
DSCF8161 by David Covarrubias, on Flickr

I hadn't really done any wildlife photography in the past few months due to time constraints and camera issues caused by two firmware updates that degraded the continuous AF performance of the 5th generation Fujifilm cameras. A new firmware update a few days ago corrected a lot of these issues (although there is still much more room for improvement).

[wigz]

Very nice David. Sharp with plenty of detail.

[MJ224]

You were one of the critters out there, David. Love the little Mockingbird, and the heron too, Any idea why they are called a mocking bird??

[David_MC]

They'll mimic the calls of other birds or other types of sound (dogs, cats, car alarms, etc.). You'll usually hear them rattle off about 10-15 songs in rapid succession although they can learn up to 200 different sounds.