Ducks from below.

[derek b]

While walking my dog at evergreen park in bremerton I came upon a small cove filled with ducks, and I thought to myself " how cool would that be.. seeing all those ducks underwater!"

so yesterday I donned my dive gear to check it out.

I was glad to see that these must be resident ducks because all 200 of them were still there, and watched me curiously as I checked my camera. Walked back and forth to the waters edge rinsing of my mask, putting on my gloves. But as soon as I touched my fins in the water ALL 200 ducks flew away! I was bummed but decided to dive any way.

After about 2 hours I was starting to get cold and was about to head in when I noticed a lone common golden eye in the cove.

After about 30 minutes of slowly moving in I got it comfortable of me to about 5'. I would wait for it to dive, count to 15, and then dive just as it would be about to come up. Then swim under it and hope to get some image of it floating in the water. I learned that I need to move very slowly underwater. The first time I think it saw me and flew off.









Here it is diving,


Watching it dive and forage for food was also pretty cool. I found out that the ducks bill acts as a shovel scooping away rocks ( some larger then it) and grabbing whatever tasty morsel may be under there.

I had some troubles with the t2i focusing on video but did capture this very short one
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/18884713[/vimeo]

[CaptnJack]

Nice pics. I've seen scoters and some other diving ducks occasionally, they seem to swim by so casually!

[ktb]

I was diving at Redondo one time and had a bird of some sort dive down right in front of me and my buddy. Very cool to watch.

[Waynne Fowler]

nice shots... it's always a good time hanging at 40-50' and having a local bird give you a 'fly by'

BTW: I thought the vid came out pretty good!