Well after the bounty of great sightings and images from last week, I had a feeling that this week would be rather quiet - seems to be almost a hit and miss pattern when I go out shooting sometimes! I had a pretty busy week with work and other social happenings, so the only time I really had to shoot was Sunday morning.
After slamming off my alarm at 5am, I jumped out of bed and raced off out of the house as quick as I could! Of course, I stopped by good ol' Maccas for a drive through coffee and I was on my way down to Mandurah. Just like last week, I planned on heading straight to Warrangup Spring as it was a great location to see a wide variety of species from Black Swans to Sacred Kingfishers. Not to mention, its nice and open to the east, meaning there are no obstructions to the light.
I arrived in the dark, finished my last few sips of coffee and headed for the boardwalk. I was greeted by the usual Black Swans drinking the fresh water found in the shallows, but a part from them, it was rather quiet. After taking a bunch of silhouette shots last week that I was really proud of, I decided to try make something different. This time, I wanted to get a shot of a Black Swan flapping it's wings - hopefully with some nice, golden light illuminating the water and the swans feathers. Black Swans will often flap their wings to dry off after preening and re-waterproofing their feathers - this is the behaviour I was hoping to capture.
And so I sat on the edge of the boardwalk and kept my eye on the swans as they were tending to their feathers. Every now and then, a swan would raise it's body out of the water and flap their huge wings several times - however on every occasion, there were always others swans blocking the shot. The sun finally rose and golden light filled the sky. Again, the swans were flapping every now and then, but due to the abundance of swans in the area, there was always someone in the way! I was being rather picky as I really wanted to capture just a lone swan flapping, with plenty of space in the frame around the subject. However, it just didn't happen today - there was simply too many swans!
As the sun continued to rise, I was joined by a lovely fellow photographer. We chatted for some time about all things photography as well as sharing local spots and recent sightings. I will admit, I was a bit distracted in this conversation. As we were chatting, I was noticing some great sightings going on behind us - swans flying just inches above the water, pelicans fishing etc. However, we were having such a nice chat, I sort of just forgot about photography all together.
After we chatted for a while, we split off and started to shoot again. I managed to shoot an okay-ish image of a Pelican gliding just centimetres above the waters surface. A lovely moment for sure and a nice, sharp image - but certainly nothing to get really excited about.
Eventually, I decided it was time to move on. I was keen to try and find some Osprey and hopefully witness some fishing behaviour. I said farewell to the photographer (whilst pointing out a Kingfisher I just spotted) and drove up the road to some perches where the Osprey frequent.
I found a female Osprey on the first perch I visited - bingo! I parked up and slowly approached the dead tree that the Osprey was perched upon. I found myself a nice spot to sit on the sand along the shoreline and set up my camera. I immediately dialled in a shutter speed of 1/2500sec so that I could capture any high speed action such as a take off or hopefully, a hunt!
By now, the sun had well and truly risen, it was getting pretty warm and the light was quite harsh. The Osprey was pretty happy just sitting up there, she really didn't do much for around 30mins or so - yet I waited. I knew from last week that she could see a fish below and strike at literally any moment, so I was poised and ready for anything. However, she was really taking her time to get going. It was well over an hour now and finally she started to seem interested in the goings on within the water below her. She began the typical head bobbing as she spotted the individual fish below - I was really hoping she would strike soon.
After around another 30mins, she still hadn't attempted a hunting dive. I was beginning to lose patience and I was suddenly distracted by the 3 Sacred Kingfishers that appeared and were hunting in the shallow waters some 20m away. I was contemplating whether I give up on the Osprey and slowly move over to Kingfishers - a shot of one hunting would be fantastic!
Before I knew it - SPLASH! The Osprey hit the water, pulled out a flounder and flew off almost in the blink of an eye - I had missed it! I was so caught up in the thought of potentially changing shots that I was not even paying attention. Serves me right for sure, but geez she made me wait a while - almost as if she really didn't want her picture taken when picking up brekkie! I managed to capture some shots of her rising out of the water with the fish and flying away, but she had her back turned to me, covering the fish and all her interesting details, so the shots were pretty lacklustre.
I'm not gonna lie, I was a bit bummed about this situation, but that's nature for ya! She plays by no rules - you just have to be ready and PATIENT! With the Osprey and now Kingfisher's gone, I decided to call it a day and head off. Not the most successful day photographically, but it's always super nice to be out in nature on such a nice morning!
So as you can probably tell by now, I didn't come away with many decent images from this week, so apologies about that - but I hope you still enjoyed the read! Next weekend, I will be heading down south to Augusta for the Easter long weekend. I know this region is abundant with wildlife and stunning landscapes so stay tuned for next week's blog entry to see what I got up to and the images I made.
Until then, I hope you have a great week and thanks for stopping by!
Yorumlar