Jump Day

About three years ago we put up a wood duck house near the pond.  The first Summer we didn't get any visitors.  We had wood ducks on the pond, but nobody took up residence in the wood duck house.

The second Summer we got a female wood duck in the house, but no babies.

This year we had another female wood duck in the house, but we didn't see any ducklings ... until TODAY!  We woke up this morning and Valerie looked at the pond and the mama wood duck was hanging around the house.  Then Valerie got the binoculars out and saw there were a couple ducklings by the mama duck!  We waited a couple more minutes and another duckling jumped out of the house!

Of course, I grabbed the camera to snap some pics!  The first few are with the 70-200mm f/2.8 and 2X extender through a window.  Not great, but I had to get something!

Once all the babies were out, she circled the pond a couple times and wandered off into the woods.  The last two are with the 70-200mm f/2.8 without the 2X Extender.  Much better images here, IMHO.