winter loon, fall color

[Steve Foss]

Having just finished a late afternoon photo shoot on Burntside Lake, I swooped over to the public access to pick up Mrs. Catfish, and we spent the evening plunking lures in the cabbage and shallow reef/island country on Burntside's west end. Got a few smallies, and this loon in winter plumage decided to trail us after the sun dropped below the horizon. Would have been nice if it would have done that half an hour earlier, but you take what you can get.

As evidenced by the watery reflection, maples along the rocky shoreline with the shallow soil already have turned red because of late summer drought stress.

This image was captured at the very edge of what the equipment could do in those conditions. Pretty calm water, but still handheld from a moving boat (and Mrs. Catfish was moving around and casting the whole time, durn it!). Note the fairly sharp eye/head but blur in the bill. It was moving its bill just a bit. And, unfortunately, even with -2/3 exposure compensation, the whites are blown out a bit. Operator error, so learn from my mistake!

Canon 30D, Canon 100-400L IS at 400mm, iso800, 1/25 at f5.6

[hendenhook]

Steve something about this photo is very cool, it has some sort of unreal quality to it.

Do the loons all turn to basically the same color in winter or just varying shades of grey? Do the the adults still have a blacker head than the junveniles?

[JoeB]

we were fishing whitefish bay on LOW 2 weeks ago and I saw loon with that plummage and thought it was just any older one.