This past year I upgrad­ed my cam­era to the Canon 5DmkII, it’s a ter­rif­ic cam­era that I’m very hap­py with, and one of the neat tricks it does is shoot high def­i­n­i­tion video. I don’t shoot too much video—I’m a stills pho­tog­ra­ph­er at heart, regard­less of what the cam­era can do—but it is fun to try once in a while.

I took this short video this past week dur­ing the cold snap—it shows a small flock of Com­mon Gold­en­eye (Bucepha­la clan­gu­la) ducks swim­ming in the riv­er then tak­ing off and fly­ing, land­ing again a ways upriv­er. The ducks dive briefly under the water sur­face a cou­ple of times before flying—my best guess is that they’re “de-icing” their wings (it was about -35° C that morn­ing).

You can push the fullscreen but­ton (four out­ward arrows at the bot­tom-right of the video) to view it larg­er, or fol­low the link to watch a high-def­i­n­i­tion ver­sion at vimeo.com.