Photo context post: Greylag Goose at Lakeside Country Park 22nd March 2021
A huge theme of my last week for my wildlife/photography was how many wildlife pictures I was lucky to be able to take and how the whole week was drenched in hallmarks, signs and feelings of spring with so many colourful and traditional spring time subjects in my pictures. There were many photos I was proud to take, and this Greylag Goose picture was one of my favourite photos to take over the last week.
It was a strong moment near the end of a very strong springtime Lakeside lunch time walk on Monday, with the Great Crested Grebe one of the pair currently courting a prominent bird too on the walk, a great Long-tailed Tit view, really nice Brimstone butterfly views and other colourful bits of spring on the trees and elsewhere as well as two of the Greylags on beach lake fighting a bit other wildlife highlights. It was also very much a walk of birds preening I had in my head as I said on Monday strong images of as well as green and yellow scenes the sounds of birds’ wings flapping and feathers beating and generally I really focused on feathers on birds so much that day. As part of that was the geese preening so I was thrilled to get so close to this one on the shore of beach lake and another preening their feathers and see it in so much detail. I lapped up chances to take pictures of this one and at that moment I thought this is a great piece of behaviour that I have rarely or never really photographed before so this is a chance to do it. I stayed patient as I took shot after shot feeling they weren’t quite in focus, even with a DSLR compared to my bridge camera that wouldn’t have coped, the constant movement was difficult. But then I struck this one and looked at it on my camera and knew I’d done fundamentally what I wanted and captured this bird preening in focus.
What I like about this image is the detail and what I feel sharpness, and also I think its one I’m pleased with for how neat it is with a fairly satisfying shallow depth of field (I think in hindsight the image may have been more powerful without the other goose’s feet and bit of body blurred in the background) but my photos are largely point of shoot type shots and for fun to capture what I see and I will always remember the joy of this moment as much as anything for having a few birds there beside me like I have been lucky to have so many times this year and this spring especially it was almost rude not to take a picture being so close again so having the other bird helps with that. I was quite pleased with the positioning of the beak touching the feathers in the photo. Overall its a photo where I loved taking it to remember the moment and I really like how I can use the photo to zoom into and remember that detail. I am always so desperate to use the sun in photos when its out and I think this one was a great way to use it, I do find it a bright and optimistic image.
The last year I have managed to take more Greylag Goose photos than ever before and enjoy seeing them more than ever. I have really come to love them in a new way and get to know them so much especially locally really getting to know so much about them and make our their distinct and strong features. This photo is one of the key moments in this journey so I was happy with it.
