Pelee pt 15 - FOTE PHOT (o shoot)

Toward the end of my stay at Pelee there was a bit of a cold snap, which resulted in hundreds of swallows sitting on the beach, picking little beetles out of the sand and generally looking unhappy. With the little bit of warmth in the afternoon they started flying around, providing an opportunity to try out some swallow flight photography. Unfortunately the light was pretty terrible and there wasn't much that came out of that, but I'll probably put a few of these pics in a later post.

What did come out of my time spent failing at swallows in flight (as usual) was the opportunity to photograph some Forster's Terns that were diving into schools of little fish just offshore! My aim of this was to get a shot of a tern just as it entered the water, and after about 400 photos I did not succeed! I did however get to spend some time up close with these birds and got a few interesting shots!

I have a few photos like this, just a fraction of a second late for what I wanted!

In addition to the 'splashes with birds in the background' I also have a series of 'splashes with no birds', but I doubt anyone wants to see those!

Most of them were successful in catching lunch!

My original strategy was to aim at the point on the water where I thought they'd hit, and then burst fire when they were diving. After a while I gave up on that and tried to follow them through their dive, which didn't give me any better luck but resulted in a completely different set of images!

I think this would have been the money shot but unfortunately the bill got cut off...maybe next time!