Killdeer on the Salado Creek Wetland

When I walked the Salado Creek Greenway this past Friday, there were several large pools of water under and just upstream of the Nacogdoches Rd bridge. A fairly large flock of killdeer were around the margin of one of these pools.

The pool was on the far side of the creek channel making the birds difficult to see both because of the distance and the fact they tended to blend in with the dry vegetation. The first photo in the series is an accurate representation of what I was able to see. There are six killdeer in this photo:

Even with the camera lens set at 300 mm, both the distance and the size of the birds pushed my system to its technical limit. I will be the first to admit, in terms of technical quality, this series ranges from minimally acceptable to rather stunning. In my opinion, this is an excellent example where the documentary value of the visual content outweighs the technical quality.

In the last two photos, above, note there is the one killdeer clearly visible, but there is also one barely visible through the tall grass on the near side of the pool.