Great Egret at Sweetwater Wetlands

I found this Great Egret fishing for dinner in one of the ponds at the Sweetwater Wetlands - I only saw this one and expected to run across more, but didn't.  He waded around this pond looking into the water and nipping at the water frequently as he moved around.  This image was taken at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/1600 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 800.

Red Tailed Hawk at Sweetwater

This Red Tailed Hawk greeted me almost as soon as I got onto the trail at the Sweetwater Wetlands. He flew in and landed on this tree branch where he sat for almost 5 minutes while I took some photos of him.  This image is cropped from the original which was taken with my 75-300mm lens at 300mm focal length on my Canon EOS 70D with an exposure of 1/8000 seconds at f/13, ISO 3200.

I was hoping the Hawk would fly off and happily, he did and I was able to snap a couple shots of him as he flew away.  This shot shows him just having jumped from the branch.  The 2nd image has him with his wings spread, but he's moved closer to the camera and is not well focused.  This image was cropped from the original taken at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/8000 at f/13, ISO 3200.

Northern Shoveler at Sweetwater

I went over to the Sweetwater Wetlands off of Prince road west of I-10 - there were plenty of birds, though not as many as I've seen there before.  My old buddy Dave always claimed to hate pictures of ducks, so I have to take some pictures of some ducks just for him.  This Northern Shoveler was swimming around one of the ponds.  This image was taken with the 75-300mm lens on my 70D at 300mm focal length.  The exposure was 1/250 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 400.