Wounded

He is dazzling, and she, modestly beautiful.  They glide together across the water, he with his bold white helmet sweeping back from a wild yellow eye and she, with her auburn war-bonnet crest scattering sunlight when she shakes the water from her body. He is a bold mosaic of black and white and she, the color of riparian shadows.

The hooded mergansers that visit
our pond each spring are shy. Unlike the resident wood ducks that explode from the water with a frenzied shriek when approached, or the mallards that scatter with a vaudevillian laugh, the mergansers quietly paddle to the furthest shore and disappear into the vegetation.

Whether they are feeding or resting on the water, they never stray far from one another and rarely does one dive to hunt when the other is already below the surface. They have each others back.

Out on the pond, they dive into the dark water again and again to return with another squirming meal, their compact form belying the efficiency with which they hunt. I have seen them bob to the surface gripping crayfish that snap at the air in a vain attempt to defend themselves, and tiny dragonfly nymphs that they toss into the air, catch, and swallow with a graceful flip of their head.

Careful observation of animals is both a necessity and the joy of wildlife photography.
When I was able to approach the pond unseen, I noted that the pair followed a pattern as they fed and rested. Every half hour or so, they completed a path that took them along the south shore of the big pond (spending extra time over a spot where crayfish seemed plentiful) and then, quickly through a narrow, shallow wetland, to our second, more secluded pond and back again.
 

To photograph the pair, I set up a portable blind where the big pond narrows, bringing the small ducks closer to shore. While they were out of site on the second pond, I slip quietly into the blind (no small task wearing hip boots, walking though a thicket of cattails, and carrying a 300mm, f2.8 lens on a tripod) and wait. Several long minutes pass before the red-winged blackbirds forget my noisy trespass and activity on the pond returns to normal.

Stricken with a photographer’s version of buck fever, my pulse quickens when the pair reappear on the pond and begin their slow passage toward my blind. Each time they dive and pop to the surface they are closer until finally, the male surfaces right in front of me. From my chosen vantage, the warm evening light dances off the scattered water droplets when he shakes himself dry. I press the shutter release and the camera springs to life. In one and a half seconds, I have ten images etched on the Nikon’s memory card.

The female swims into view and I swing the lens toward her. With a light touch of the shutter release, she snaps into focus and once again, I fire off a quick succession of photographs. I continue to track her passage past my blind until she is out of view, but I do not trip the shutter again. Something is wrong.


Two important tenets of wildlife photography are to keep an animal’s body (and most other subjects) parallel to the plane formed by the back of the camera, and to make sure the animal’s eye is in focus. The former practice ensures that the depth of field at the aperture you have chosen is used to its fullest potential and the latter creates intimacy between the viewer and the subject. As the female merganser passed in front of my blind, I noticed that her eye looked odd, as if it were out of focus even though I had trained my focus point over it.

Later, when I looked closely at the
photos I had taken of the mergansers, I could see that the female had somehow lost an eye. If it was a defect or an injury she had suffered it is hard to say, but a cloudy, white orb filled her right eye socket. The wound did not prevent her from successfully hunting, and, since she had paired up with a male, apparently the rest of her life was proceeding normally as well.


Another unfortunate tenet of wildlife photography is that photographs of injured or other “imperfect” animals don’t sell. Despite the photographs that are used in calendars and magazines, most animals (and people, too) carry the scars of life. Many market-driven wildlife photographers discard photographs of “damaged” subjects or manipulate them into perfection using Photoshop.

Regardless, real natural beauty thrives despite the bruises and imperfections; and true grace is more than fine feathers, fur, or skin.

As the ice goes out this spring and the migrating ducks return, I am watching and hoping that the wounded merganser returns. If she does, she is welcome to all the crayfish she can catch.


  ©Robert W Domm 2014

        All Photos
          Nikon D300
          Nikon 300mm f2.8 lens
           ISO 400