Stymied....

I popped down to the harbour this morning to do my usual update on the gull nestlings only to find the swing bridge to the the outer harbour wall was raised. Evidently it had been opened to allow the fishermen to moor their boats in the inner harbour as storms are expected over the weekend. There was no possible way, short of swimming, that I was going to be able to reach the gull nests - not very advisable when you are carrying a camera with a 300mm lens on it. I will maybe check again on Monday to see how things are progressing.

However, it did me the opportunity to capture some real action in the harbour. One of the fishing boats had just docked and was unloading its cargo so there were plenty of birds hanging around and a pair of seals (including Sammy bottom right whose party trick is to clamber board the fishing boats for food). I thought the juvenile flying  (top left) could have easily been one of the nestlings I am following as it is a similar size. After the boat had finished unloading the fisherman dumped the rest of the catch overboard and started a real feeding frenzy among all the birds. I captured several minutes of this action in high speed capture but the real problem then the problem was sorting out which images to use as many of the images were complex and confused. In the end I chose examples where it is fairly obvious which birds are fighting for which morsel of fish. (top right and bottom left). The pair of birds at the bottom of the top right image had a real tussle for their fish as they appear locked in battle for quite a time and appeared n many of my images.