Coming in to land....

While walking the dogs at our local country park I spotted a mother and child feeding the ducks. They'd attracted a big crowd of black-headed gulls, all wheeling and jostling for a crust.

As I had my telephoto lens with me I thought I'd have a go at photographing birds in flight. I've tried this before and generally failed dismally - a combination of difficulty tracking the birds, and being far more used to taking small numbers of carefully composed shots of static objects.

Still, I had a go, and among the many failures I managed to capture a few half-decent images. I soon got into the swing of burst shooting, to try and capture a good shot - although it felt quite weird at first. After deleting the many completely out-of-focus grey blobs I was left with a small handful to choose from (see here.)

In the end I chose the one that had the most unusual pose. I know it's not the sharpest of the bunch, but I never even realised that gulls could put their wings in this position when they were slowing down!