Wood duck sightings

On Easter Sunday while pheasant hunting (with a camera silly) http://www.arlynsphotos.com/images/pheasant.jpg we (my wife, daughter and I) came across a few wood ducks http://www.arlynsphotos.com/images/duck.jpg These were between Silver Lake and Cokato.

Very difficult in that it has taken years of practice. In this case we were prepared. Like so many things in life, first you have to try - you'll never get a photo like this if you don't go out. Second you have to practice, have good equipment and have it set up correctly. Then you have to get "lucky". If you keep trying you'll eventually get "lucky". When pheasant hunting with a camera I have one of three styles. 1) sit in a blind where I have seen pheants before and wait for one to walk by. 2) Drive until I see one, go past, get out of the car in the ditch on the opposite side of the pheasant, crawl over the road and hope it is still there. 3) Drive until I see one, turn around and go back very smoothly and slowly, hoping it won't spook too bad until I get a shot. For the wood ducks it worked the third style. I saw them sitting at the bottom of a dredge ditch near the road. The ditch was deep so they couldn't see out very far. I turned around, put the car in a slow roll and had the camera out the window and ready. There were 6 ducks in the water, only two in the sunlight. I had about 3 seconds before they were more than a few yards away.