[Leica] Thanksgiving goose

["Roy Zartarian" <royzart@connix.com>]

LUGs

This is the week when most of us in the U.S. think of turkey.  
However, after last Sunday's birding walk in a local park, 
accompanied by my canine domestic companion, my thoughts 
have been on geese.  A scan of a flock of Canadas with the 
Trinovids turned up a Greater white-fronted goose.  This species 
nests in Alaska and northwestern Canada and winters in Texas 
and Mexico. It is a rarity in the northeastern U.S

After checking all the markings against the field guide to be sure, I 
quickly drove home, deposited the canine companion and grabbed 
some chrome, camera, tripod, extenders and 280/2.8 and returned 
to get documentation of the bird's presence and identity.  

Although the Canadas are used to human presence, they do not 
tolerate too close an approach, and the flock will frustratingly 
waddle away as a human nears, even one with Leica equipment.  
Consequently I employed the Ted Grant approach to stacking 
extenders, adding both the 2x and the 1.4x to the 280.  The 
camera, an R6 recently acquired from Sherry Krauter, was one I 
hadn't used before, but my confidence in the source was not 
misplaced - the metering and shutter speeds were right on the 
money.  

A couple of the results appear at 
http://www.fatrobin.com/customer.htm and, with  Doug Herr's 
pelican experience in mind, I gave a small digital print to the town's 
parks superintendent.  

The birding gods continued to smile, for the week later brought into 
the park a brant, another goose rare to my area.  So far, that one 
has been seen but not yet decently photographed. My own 
forgetfullness frustrated  this morning's outing. I remembered to 
bring everything except my gloves.

Happy Thankgsgiving,
Roy