A Visit to Old Cannery Park

Before dawn I walked the couple miles from my apartment in Hoquiam, Wash., to Old Cannery Park on the Grays Harbor bay.

A cold fall rain greeted me as soon as I got there. I waited it out in the Lions Club pavilion, and got out to the water to start shooting just as the sun was rising.

To the west, Terminal 3 of the Port of Grays Harbor, where they load wood chips onto barges, offers an interesting horizon line element. I tried several different spots, but by no means exhausted the possible compositions of this view.

At times the view to the west looked like sunset more than sunrise.

As the light increased, my attention was drawn away from the landscape to the wildlife.

When I spotted the heron perched on a piling out in the bay, I knew it was time to switch from my 18-55mm kit lens to my 75-300mm zoom.

A flock of American wigeons made their way past the point made by the park and into a little nook to the east.

It took me forever to identify these birds as American wigeons. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology site All About Birds shows photos of them with a prominent green stripe on the head, which I wasn't seeing in my photos. It's possible that is a result of the early morning, cloudy light; maybe that black head we see does have green in it. The white crown and the way they dabble (or bob) on the surface as they feed (rather than diving under) makes me 99 percent sure of my identification.

You can see them dabbling in the following photos, and I'm also including a short video of at the end of this post so you can see (and hear) them in action. "Dabbling" is a new word to me: it just means they tip up perpendicular and float there, without going under.

The sky that morning was wild. It shifted to its third or fourth iteration as I was photographing the wigeons.

And it was cold. All of the sudden I realized I was freezing. I took one more shot of the great blue heron and packed it in.