Critter Day at Juanita Bay

Today I went to Juanita Bay Park on Lake Washington and took a whole lot of photos. The sun was out and so were the critters. I saw dozens of turtles, a few bullfrogs, herons, ducks, swallows, and a couple little birds that might be juvenile downy woodpeckers. Home again, I'm sorting through all 375 photo files trying to decide which might be suitable for reference for a painting or drawing, which really shine as photograph and which can go straight into the bin.My camera is a Canon T4i DSLR with a Sigma zoom lens that has an 18mm to 250mm range. I'd love to have more reach, but I'm going to see what I can do with what I've got before buying another lens. 250mm is still so much more than I used to have that I'm still delighted every time I use it. On the computer I start off with Adobe Lightroom for photo sorting and initial exposure and color corrections. I shoot in Raw format so I need to convert files to a different format before working on them in Photoshop, anyway. My goal is always to come up with clean, clear photos that don't require any adjustments, but sometimes the light is just wrong and I'm happy when extreme exposure adjustments mean an image can be salvaged for reference material somewhere down the road.the little bird pictures to the left is my little mystery bird. I suspect it's a juvenile downy woodpecker, but I'm not sure of that. If not a downy woodpecker, it's something related. What a treat! Around the apartment the closest I get is the occasional northern flicker. (I did hear a great horned owl in the middle of the night last week, though! I'd love to get a picture of one of them!)