Common Terns fishing

I took a few photos on the beach at Camber Sands yesterday, of Common Terns fishing as the tide was going out - they seem to find plenty of fish in the shallow water at this point. They'd fly upwind hunting, then zoom downwind to the start of the feeding patch and work their way back up again.
First, here's a few of them flying around - they chase each other quite a bit.
It's quite obvious when they're looking for fish, as they cruise along looking down:
and then when they spot one...
You can just about see the fish in the bird's beak in the last one. I was especially pleased to get the pictures of two diving for fish at the same time - purely by chance, as I was only following one of them with the camera!

Mike

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Black headed gulls at Camber

We went for a short walk on the beach this morning, and there were lots of black headed gulls flying around, looking for food in the breaking waves, so I got some nice pics. You'll notice that although these are black headed gulls, their heads aren't very black! They only have black heads in the summer, in the winter there's only a hint of their summer colouring.
Here's a nice sequence, though the bird didn't get the fish this time, despite two attempts:
This time though, a small fish is caught:
They weren't the only ones out making the most of the waves, we saw these windsurfers too:
That's all for now, we might go to the wood tomorrow - I've got a new double pulley to test out with the ropes!

Mike

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