Young Wood Duck, Aix sponsa

I have been offline for several weeks with chronic computer issues. I have a bit of a backlog of digital images to upload. I captured this one today at Roy Swamp Wildlife Management Area in Sharon, Connecticut, USA. I took this image in late afternoon light. The original image was edited in FastStone to lighten the shadows and add a bit of contrast and sharpening to bring out some detail. This image was cropped a bit as well to remove the part of a second duck and most of the doughnut bokeh above the duck, typical of the mirror lens that was used for this image. There are just a few doughnuts remaining, in the upper left and lower right. This duck is only one of six siblings, all unafraid and eager to pose for me. I was standing on the shoreline only about twenty feet, or so, away. The mother and father were nowhere in sight and I would enjoy the opportunity to image them as well.

For this image, I used my manual focus Tamron Adaptall-2 Model 55BB SP 500mm f8 Tele Macro Mirror Lens and Tamron Adaptall-2 140f 1.4X Flat Field Teleconverter with attached Tamron Adaptall-2 Pentax K M Mount on Pentax K20D Camera, hand held, manually focused, Shake Reduction set to 700mm focal length, ISO 800, f8 on lens (f11 with TC), 1/180 sec, with available ambient light. This lens was functioning as a 700mm f11 lens.