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View Full Version : The wild life in Nampa



QuietOne
09-04-2013, 12:44 AM
I'm working backwards through my summer photo folders. This one's my fault. I'd mentioned to Mike that I'd been seeing marmots by the Welcome to Nampa sign in front of the Fred Meyer. When I got home the next day, he was standing at the door with his camera and my camera bag. Sunset was less than 20 minutes away, it had been cloudy off and on all day, and I'd seen signs that the little beasts were skittish. No help for it. I pulled the polarizer off the lens so I wouldn't have to fiddle with the ISO at the last second. We were shooting from the parking lot, which is across the canal from them, and they still dove for the burrows. We had to wait several minutes for them to come out, and you couldn't move much without them getting nervous. The photos of them turned out softer than I'd hoped. The canal shots were as blown as I expected. The duck and her ducklings down in the canal were far more cooperative.

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It's just about downtown.

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They're really feeding well.

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Another view of just how urban the area they're in is

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The ducks.

Marko
09-04-2013, 07:23 AM
I like shot 1 here.

JAS_Photo
09-04-2013, 09:34 AM
Those are cool little critters. :)

Hillbillygirl
09-06-2013, 07:52 PM
That is so cool QO. Love the story about these and without the pics to really show how urban the area is some may not have believed this.

Hillbillygirl
09-06-2013, 08:00 PM
That is so cool QO. Love the story about these and without the pics to really show how urban the area is some may not have believed this.

QuietOne
09-07-2013, 07:05 PM
Thanks, all. HBG, it's pleasantly surprising to see the variety of critters and plants in and along the irrigation canals. There's at least one heron that flies over the house every once in a while, and one of the canals across town has salmon in them. Apparently, there's a fish hatchery "up stream" from it, and these are escapies. People fish for them, which is legal, but personally I wouldn't touch anything caught from that canal. It's on a major intersection and next to a gas station. The rains are gonna wash a whole lotta crud into that canal.

asnow
09-08-2013, 06:12 PM
Love the story. Those first two pics made me think of the movie Caddyshack.

QuietOne
09-11-2013, 12:02 AM
:laugh: I think they're a bit bigger than that gopher. I haven't seen them lately, but I expect the city wasn't interested in them tunneling under the telephone pole and its supporting cable. I imagine they've been removed.