Ring-necked Duck

We got our new "loft" sofa today.  These are a small sized sofa, about 75-78" long.  Bigger than a love seat, smaller than a full sized sofa.  Fits in our space perfectly.  

A lovely day for late January, so Bill and I went to Ridgefield NWR to see what we could see.  We saw this Ring-necked duck and Gadwall ducks and lots and lots and lots of Canada Geese. Did you know that these geese are edible?...sort of.  I was curious if anybody actually ate these, or hunted Canada Geese, and they do, with very restricted hunting regulations since the are a protected species.  I'm not sure they need to be protected anymore, since they seem to number in the zillions.  The recipe that I found seemed rather daunting, as the point was to try to make the meat actually taste good.  I do not know if this pretty Ring-necked Duck is on the hunter's menu....they are so pretty. 

Please feel free to check out my photos here.  Then you can tell me how to get a decent photo of white egrets in the bright sunlight.  The egret was so pretty walking along the bank of the canal, picking at things to eat and his reflection in the water was just lovely.  But my images of that turned out pretty bad.  Too bright of the white egret.  A later photo of a different egret came out pretty well, however.  Different lighting by the time we got to him I guess.  

We hoped to see eagles, but we didn't see any of them.  Then after we were done we took a different route back to the freeway and I saw one barn to photograph.  And I don't know what these people do for a living, but we saw some lovely large homes sitting on their acreage, looking very.....rich.  Fun to explore a new area.  

Thanks for stopping by,