Elegant Little Terns

Little Tern is one of my favourite birds. I never get tired looking at their arial acrobatics and elegant poses when they fly and hover in the air and dive in to the water to capture fish. Unfortunately, I don’t get to see them very often and have captured them only a few times. After the Golden Week holidays, I was lucky to photograph them on two days, although for a rather short time on each day. The pond where I photographed them is long but narrow, almost like a river, and therefore, at times they flew very close to me. After successfully catching some fish, they would leave the pond to take the fish to their females as part of their courtship. There were only a few birds, three at the highest, so most of the time I was just waiting for a long time for the birds to come back again. While waiting I chatted with local fisherman and captured the many herons that seemed to get alone with the fishermen far too well.

A few times after catching fish, I saw the terns to drop the fish in mid-air and recapture it again. For me it looked as if they did it deliberately (to get a better grip of the fish) because it usually happened very high in the air when they were sure to be able to recapture the fish again. I am hoping to photograph that scene again some day from a shorter distance. Some of my images below are heavily cropped.

私が一番好きな鳥の一つはコアジサシです。魚を取る時のエレガントな空中アクロバチックやホバリングをいつまで見ても、飽きないです。残念ながら、コアジサシを数回しか撮れてないです。ゴールデンウィーク明け、久しぶりに２回チャンスがありました。細長い池のの上の飛び交ったり、ダイビングしたりのを観察できました。時に運良くとても近い距離までに来てくれました。しかし、鳥が少なく、魚を取れた後、どこかに待っているメスに魚を持って行ったから、長い間鳥が帰って来るのを我慢強く待つしかなかったです。待っている間は釣りのおじいさんと話したり、人懐っこいサギを写真に収めたりしました。

コアジサシが魚を空中で落として、再びキャッチしたシーンを何回か観察できました。それは毎回必ずキャッチできる高いところでやった事実から、わざとやったと私は解釈しました。今度同じようなシーンを近い距離で撮れたら嬉しいです。以下の写真の一部はトリミングした写真です。