Gulls and Terns

Aside from bird photography one of my other interests revolves around cars. Mainly sports cars, but I like to read about everyday ones too. The likes of Ferrari, Porsche, Aston Martin and Jaguar provide cars with real style and excitement. I'll probably never be able to afford such a model, but they're still wonderful to admire.

In amongst the vast array of cars though are MPVs. People Carriers. I'll probably offend some now, but buying one of these to me, is saying you've given up on life and opted to accept the notion that having a couple of kids means you have to drive one of these.

It doesn't matter what the manufacturers do to them; Vauxhall have a VXR version with a turbo-charged engine and racy wheels for example, that hits 60 in about 7 seconds. Hot hatch performance. But it's still just an MPV and as such holds no interest for me at all.

Which brings us on to gulls. I like most species of bird, especially birds of prey - perhaps the peregrine falcon is the McLaren F1 of the world (I don't really like the look of the Veyron), but gulls just don't seem to do it for me. Sure I have pictures of them in my gallery and if they're around me when I'm photographing something else, I'll take a shot, but making the effort to go to see one in its own right?

I appreciate that it's rare, but going over to the Flashes at dusk, to get a record shot of the Sabine's gull just hasn't been attractive to me at all. I'm not alone with this though, as a friend of mine isn't interested in LBJs at all, concentrating almost all of his bird photography on birds of prey. So apologies for anyone looking for pics of the Sabine's gull on my gallery... there aren't any! Yet.

Bizarrely, given this attitude it's strange that I do like terns. And as such, I've been over to the Moors lately to get shots of the juvenile black tern. What a tricky subject to photograph! They fly pretty quickly normally, but in the blink of an eye, dive and swoop over the surface of the water, rising back up, only to dive again. Makes following them with the camera a real challenge.



Maybe if it relocates to the Flashes, then I could wait around for dusk, and get pics of anything else around at that time?