PACIFIC LOON • 10.25.23 • Prospect Lake, El Paso County, Colorado

[David Laliberte]

PACIFIC LOON • 10.25.23 • Prospect Lake, El Paso County, Colorado

I've found the Pacific Loon today. This Loon has been found at Prospect Lake since the 14th of October. I have always found this loon there in the six times that I've been out there. It has not been an easy bird to photograph. It would be a good bet for the use of a spotting scope as it's not all that far out. There has also been one reported at Big Johnson Reservoir/Bluestem Prairie. I've not even considered that much larger body of water. I didn't do too well with the Arctic Loon in early last May.

This not an easy bird to get.  First of all, Loons are often not the most photogenic subjects from the bird world. They spend a good portion of their day diving or submerging into the depths of the water body. Today I could see that this Loon caught something - perhaps some sort of invertebrate. I've been back to the lake about 6 times since October 14th. Most of the shots I took resulted in blurry images. I did some selective sharpening in post-processing.  That wasn't totally successful - I did manage to save a few of the better images after PP.

Today I decided to push the envelope quite a bit further. I upped the shutter speed quite a bit and also upped the ISO function quite a bit - this helped tremendously.

David Laliberte, Colorado Springs