I really like the elegant curved wing position of this Royal Tern photo but my feelings are tempered by the scene that unfolded before Newton and I on this outing. While lying on the beach at high tide taking photos of Terns and some smaller shore birds, this Royal Tern appeared in front of us flapping his wings in and out of the water trying to make it to shore. He eventually made it to dry land but appeared to have an injured leg. We couldn’t see any obvious reason for his injury. Very sad…
Taken with Canon 1DX and Canon 500mm F4 IS II with 1.4X III teleconverter mounted on Skimmer ground pod with Wimberley II gimbal head
Aperture priority, 1/2500 sec @ F5.6, ISO 1600, evaluative metering, +1/3 exposure compensation
