Seagull in Flight with Starfish. Near Davenport, California. May 15, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A seagull in flight carrying a starfish in its beak.

This is an odd little photograph that I’ve been holding on to for some time, waiting to finally post it. When you photograph the natural word, every so often something unexpected happens, and sometimes you don’t even realize what happened until later. (I once made a photograph of a fog shrouded Pacific Coast scene, and it wasn’t until months later while working on the photograph in post that I realized that a small but energetic waterfall was in the scene!)

In mid-May I spent some time photographing shore birds skimming along the cliff edge above the Pacific coast not far from Davenport California. The basic approach is to find a location where the birds come close to the cliff edge and where there is a suitable background (if the birds follow the “right” path) and to then wait and quickly track the birds as they cross my field of view, often shooting in burst mode when they are in their best positions. After a while the actions begin (fortunately!) to become somewhat automatic: spot bird or group of birds, find bird(s) in viewfinder, get birds into the right part of the frame, begin panning with the anticipated path of the bird(s), keep bird(s) in the good part of the frame and under AF points, track and shoot, watch bird(s) disappear, lather, rinse, repeat.

As this bird went past I recall thinking something like, “What the heck was in its mouth?” No time to actually see while shooting, but later I found that it was carrying a medium size starfish, fully intact and with legs extending from its mouth!

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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