Emerald Photographic Society had our first official field trip of the season today – Thanks Jeff, for planning it and getting all of us out there.

It started out well – aside from not sleeping until 4 hours before I needed to be up. I made it there right on time, we had a good-sized group of people (at 5:15 in the morning, more than 3 people is a good-sized group), and my boots actually fit reasonably well over my jeans. Oh, and the jacket that I dug out of the closet – the Mister’s old camoflauge uniform jacket – fit me perfectly, and I looked almost like I knew what I was doing trying to stalk animals.

And then there was the boring section. Once there, everyone more or less split up. The dragonflies which we had hoped to find hadn’t arrived. The only wildlife I saw was a fabulous red-winged blackbird – who flew away as soon as I moved the camera.

One loop back around the pond, and I started wondering if everyone had left already. Caught up with a couple of folks just as Sondra was shooting a wee little newt, who seemed to like the attention and held still while we fussed with her tripod to get the camera almost up the little guy’s nose. And then we spent some time hiding in the tall grasses while watching a full day-care equivalent of geese – some of the goslings nearly had their full markings. And the younger goslings found that the grass was taller than they were, and made some sort of hopping motion trying to reach the grass tips.