Aerial Wizard

Bajadreamer

Mid and late summer are usually the slowest times for me to capture images, that I like, of our local birds here in San Diego. Many of the migratory birds are gone, many of the local birds are looking a little worn from molting and wear and tear of their breeding feathers, and, if the weather is hot, many birds simply hunker down.
Trying to alter that scenario, I went to the San Joaquin Marsh and Wildlife Reserve in Irvine yesterday. Unfortunately my favorite pond was overgrown with reeds and other vegetation. Could not even see the water from ground level. So I went to one of the other ponds that allow low POV shooting. This is a larger pond, so often the birds are a long ways off. This was true yesterday, but a few of the Caspian Terns and Black Skimmers came close enough to get some images I liked. This first one is a Caspian Tern. The feeding behavior of these terns is a little different than most terns. Caspian Terns skim the surface of the water capturing fish and other critters that are near the surface. As the birds skim the surface they sometimes perform aerial maneuvers that are wonderful to see and photograph. This was taken with 840 mm lens (600 + 1.4 extender) on a Canon R5 ii. This is FF, little processing was done; the whites were taken down a little.