I made it back out on the Rock River. If gas prices would drop I would be going the the Mississippi River because I am not seeing much on the Rock.
I saw some junk someone dumped on Rock Falls river front, an ongoing problem, and so I am documenting this when it happens. So I took a photo in the dark river bank and forgot I lowered my exposure. I continued my drift not seeing anything and when I did see some birds feeding on Mayflies, I forgot by exposure was too slow and missed some great shots, but I noticed the images were much shaper, the ones that weren’t blurry. The exp was on 300. So I have been missing out on sharper images that are stationary. This will make my settings much harder now because I use full manual and mostly just need to adjust my ISO, along with 3 back button focus.
I was getting photos of Blackbirds catching mayflies and one picked on off the water, using his feet to stay out of the river and it really looked cool, but it was blurry.
There is a of of Orioles around, lots of birds but hard to see in the brush. I found 3 Oriole nests so far. The Kingfisher went in hiding, the chicks will be fledging soon. I did not see any wildlife, I can tell people have been disturbing them again this year, same people throwing junk out. The are poachers who want to get rid of me so they throw junk out and ride around spooking wildlife with airhorns and their boats.
The river dropped a foot but was still high, almost reaching flood stage and the river was muddy. I did see another Eagle up river a mile from nest. It may be the missing male. While drifting I saw a Woody with chicks, so as usually I went to the other side of the river and this time she acted like she was leading me over there and on down river. After going past a point that Eagle saw her and tried to catch her but he stood no chance, she wasn’t crippled, just acted like it to fool predators away from chicks. He missed and she got away.
