Prepared for attack

Decent in large though I did quite a bit of cropping...

I was clicking off image after image of this blue jay. He was a little far from me for a perfect shot, but I would have made too much noise in the fallen leaves to move any closer. Happy with what I was getting, I paused from the burst shooting at just the wrong moment... Between this and the next image I have, another blue jay swooped down and the two of them took off in a slow twisting dance into the air. I, of course, have an excellent image of their feet... :( At first I was pretty mad at myself, but then I saw that I had the pre-encounter pose; a reasonable conciliation prize. ;)

After the blue jay shoot, I walked down to the lake just in time to see a flock of ducks taking off. It wasn't until I got them up on the computer, that I realized that they were wood ducks! We've never spotted any on our lake, so that was fun to see. :) I also snapped an image of a plane overhead that I liked in the end; the angle, clouds and jet stream remind me of a rocket taking off.

Heading to Mom and Dad's for a visit this weekend. I'm hoping to get to blip a cardinal; they have them in abundance and we don't see many up here (at least I don't anyway). If not, the fall colors should be at peak color on my road trip! :)