Mallards, I love the color green. Look closely, the female was watching me.

Mallards are beautiful and the males with their green heads are spectacular when you can catch them in the right light. Therein lies an issue, catching the males with the light hitting their heads just right so the green is brilliant. I don't go birding with a goal of shooting mallards at all. Like Canada geese, mallards are everywhere in Albuquerque and so these birds are easily passed by without so much as a glance. But when the stars are aligned, the mallards can provide great opportunities for some really beautiful pictures. Oftentimes when I'm taking pictures, I really can't see what is going on in the photograph. The image below is an example of this. There was no way that I could see that the female barely had her eye above the water line. I get home after a fruitful day of birding and insert the SD card into my laptop. My goal for the picture was to get the mallards bright green head as bright as possible. Looking at the picture, the mallard's green head was lit up just like I was hoping for. Initially I missed the fact the female's eye was looking right at me with her eye just above the water line. Pretty cool picture. Because of the limitations with blogspot, I created a second picture where I cropped the male out so you could better see the head of the female.















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