This past weekend I was fortunate enough to see a female Hooded Merganser duck (Lophodytes cucullatus) again enter a nesting box at my local marshland park. If you want to see some photos of my first such incident, check out my previous posting.
It is proving to be quite a challenge to capture this fascinating encounter in photographs, even with my camera trained on the nesting box. I think I get my best shots when the female chooses to land on the box prior to entering it. At that moment, the subject is relatively stationary and I can refocus my camera on the duck itself, and not on the box. When she flies into and out of the box, my camera and lens have trouble maintaining focus and stopping the action, even at exposures of 1/1000 and greater.
She paused a moment when exiting and I was able to get a shot with her head sticking out of the nesting box. I also got a photo of her flying out of the box, which is pretty blurry, but I thought the shadow was pretty cool.
The last two shots are aspirational shots for me—they give you an idea of what I am trying to shoot, even if I have not yet been able to do so successfully.
Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
WOW!
That looks like a tight squeeze to get out.
I still haven’t figure out the timing for exiting the box, i.e. how to generate enough forward momentum to fly out of the box and not get the wings stuck. It would be a similar problem to arrest forward momentum when entering so that she doesn’t slam her bill against the back of the box.
What a cutie!! I like her hair style. Nice shots, Mike!! I can only imagine how difficult it must be to catch her movements. 🙂
I haven’t tried this, but how about putting your camera setting on multiple frames per sec and fast shutter speed and then pressing the shutter as soon as you see the head emerge from the box?
What an amazing sequence of photos… Great capture of a very intriguing bird.
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