I can't get enough of flying ducks, it's a real challenge to photograph them and very rewarding when you achieve success. It's good to be able to see what you can't with the naked eye and there is something very aesthetically  satisfying  to see birds in flight.   Look at the panels of colour in the wings of the Shoveler above, you can't see this in the resting bird nor with the naked eye when the bird is in flight.  Ducks fly very quickly but usually in a straight line so once the camera has "locked on" its a relatively easy job to get a shot. I suppose you need to lock on in much the same way that a wildfowl shooter would with his rifle but it takes a much higher level of skill to get a photograph than it does to blast a bird out of the sky with gunshot that is designed to spread. Don't start me off on the shooting debate which I am totally 100% against and can not see any justification for allowing it to take place. To my eyes the shooting of wildfowl is abhorrent and barbaric. But back to photography. The light needs to be good enough to achieve a fast shutter speed,  so ideally bright sunlight is best. However, this sunlight needs to be flooding on to the bird from behind you.

 

It's a measure of the quality of the optics in my new 300 Pentax lens and Pentax K3 camera, that you can see such detail in the birds eyes in these two Shoveler photos above.
This shows a couple of Teal flying very quickly away. Notice how short the wings are in this little species, Teal are tiny ducks that incidentally, do not quack as you would expect. Both the male and female show this "teal green" colour in the wing, a colour that is unique enough to give it's name to that shade.