The other day, while walking with a friend in Ravensbury Park in Surrey, I came across something I've never seen before. At first glimpse I thought it might be a seagull then as we got about 30 feet away I thought it must be some species of duck. It was only as we got very close to it that we realized that it was a white coot. It appeared to be nesting (though no young, yet) with a normal-coloured coot. Pictures of the white coot, and both coots together below.
Conditions for getting good shots weren't great, especially for the picture of the pair, so I'm not posting these for critique, though feel free to let loose if you want to.
Shot with a 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM lens on a Canon 40D. Post-processing: tweaked fill light, highlights, shadow, and sharpness in Picasa. Saved at 85% quality in the Gimp.
Click the picture to go to the Flickr page where you can see the large version.
White Coot
1/1600 sec @ f/5.6, ISO 400, Av mode, fl:300mm, partial metering
White Coot And Black Coot
1/400 sec @ f/8, ISO 400, Av mode, fl:70mm, partial metering
I welcome comments, constructive criticism, and suggestions for improvement. Thanks.
