The Swan Family

Hey, @nelinoeva. I haven't posted anything about our feathered friends in 5 weeks. Time flies fast, and summer has already become our story and is a thing of the past. During this time, many events happened in my life, and I wrote about many of them on Hive. Today I want to tell you again about the place that I once called "Duck Paradise". But it's also the place where the swan family lives. In previous years, I didn't get to see them because they lived at the far end of the pond behind the reeds. This year, these graceful birds are not hiding from people. The family consists of 2 white swans and their six children, whom Hans Christian Anderson called the "The Ugly Duckling".

I usually come to this reservoir, park in the lot in front of the "Titanic" club, and start inspecting it. I was looking for swans. I used my Nikon D5300 camera and Tamron 18-400mm lens at full power. I saw a flock of swans in the distance. They were about 400 meters away. So I got behind the wheel and drove along the road by the reservoir to watch the birds until they swam to the opposite shore.

The birds are in the shade, the sun is already rolling towards the horizon and half of the reservoir has already turned dark.

Here they are, all 8 birds. The children have already become the size of their parents, but their color is still different. When will they turn white too? I don't know for sure, I need to turn to the Internet for help.

There are still a lot of ducks on the lake; it's a real duck paradise! No hunters are here; I hope they don't come here.

I feel the need for a mirrorless camera. I'm going to get it by Christmas, but I haven't decided on a choice: Nikon Z6iii or Sony a7V. And I will need 3 lenses: a portrait lens, a landscape lens, and a telephoto lens for searching for animals and birds. All this costs a lot of money. But my current Nikon and lenses don't let me get the right pictures.

I've been watching the swans for about half an hour; I've been waiting for this exact moment. I missed the moment when the young swan was spreading its wings, but I caught the moment when the white swan was doing it.

Only 2 frames. The swan did not flap its wings for long, and the camera allows you to take only 4 frames of fast shooting, and then a noticeable amount of time passes between them. I bought this camera in 2018 and changed the 3 main lenses after that. I just gave them to my friends. In 8 years, mirrorless cameras have come a long way in their capabilities.

A day later, I was at this place again, but this time I had a Sigma f/1.8 18-35mm lens. It's a cool lens, it takes sharp photos. But... The birds are far away.

This is a processed previous image, I cropped it and the swans got closer to me. You can bring it closer and the quality will be good enough. This is a cool lens!