Take Off

As I tuned the corner onto the Belhaven saltmarsh this morning on my usual dog walk, I spotted a large flock of pochard feeding on the ground right across the pathway to the beach. I had taken my telephoto lens with me as it was a nice sunny day and proceeded to take it out of my rucksack whilst restraining the dogs from wandering down the pathway. By the time I was ready to shoot half the flock had already flown off but I was able to see a group of about forty still on the ground. As we approached they all rose as one and took off over the beach and  I was able to able to capture them taking off and flying off as a large group. I decided to use the shots of them just taking off as my blip as they show their feather texture in so much more detail and I have restricted my focus to just a small group of them.