WHITE ON WHITE

I have quite a collection of swimming trumpeter swan photos.

Swimming swans are fairly easy to photograph.

But catching them on the wing is a little more of a challenge.

I learned of a nearby wildlife refuge where grain fields next to some ponds are left unharvested.

 Migrating birds stop and rest there and get a little fast food before traveling on.

No motorized vehicles are allowed so I strapped on my snow shoes 

and brought along my camera to see what I would find.

 At first I only saw one or two birds.

 Then I located dozens and dozens of them. 

Trumpeters are named such because their call sounds like a honking horn.

This flock of birds sounded more like a traffic jam of taxis.

They are huge birds.  Standing flat footed they are around five feet tall

 and the adults have a wing span of over seven feet.

 My ski pole near a trumpeter’s track.

 Their feet are twice the size of my hands.

 They weigh between fifteen and thirty pounds so it takes a good run

 for them to get off the ground.

Here you can see how much larger they are than Canada geese.

 Over by the grain fields there were hundreds more of the big birds.

  They were having quite a dinner party.

Anyway, I got plenty of photos.

 One flying swan.

 Three coming in for a landing.

 Four winging their way overhead.

I took two hundred photographs, 

but I edited them down to about a hundred. 

Guess I have a few shots of flying swans now.

Here are a few seconds I recorded of their honking.

I was trying to shoot in full sun off the LCD monitor of my camera

so I had no clue what kind of video I was getting.

The clackity-clack sound is my auto-focus freaking out.

I've got a lot to learn about taking videos with this new camera.