Promises, Promises

We've all heard the common saying that promises are made to be broken.  One of these days I'm going to learn not to make promises about future posts on this blog!  It was my stated intention on my last post to present photos of some of the birds of March's Point.  However, we had a very nice day today and I, being unfettered by family or obligations, went on a photo expedition to Fir Island.  Since I consider the day's photography more interesting than March's Point, I'm going to show you photographs of today's travels instead. 

I had made it less than a half mile from my home when I encountered this Common loon in the Cap Sante Marina in Anacortes.  This is as close as I've been able to get to one in several years.  When I saw the bird I quickly pulled over to the side of the road and equipped my 200-400mm zoom lens with my 1.7X tele-converter which almost doubles the size of the image.  Given the size of the image sensor in my camera I'm told by a friend, who is a professional photographer, that this gives me the 35mm equivalent of over 1000mm.  But so much for the technical information. 

So back to the Common loon... 

This was probably the friendliest loon I've ever encountered.  As I was leaving it waved goodbye to me several times with its foot!   I had to take a photograph since I know there are a lot of Doubting Thomas' out there, especially when it comes to any of my stories! 

Just before crossing to Fir Island I found one of several groups of swans not far from the road.  The lighting was excellent and I took a good many photos of them but I won't bore you with swan photos.  However I did catch this little spat between this adult and juvenile Trumpeter swan.