Bathing Beauty

This Mew Gull chick that is bathing next to the beach is one of the two in my previous gull post “Afternoon at the Beach” . What a difference in two weeks time! The chicks have lost most of their fuzz, have grown big beautiful wings and are almost as large as their mother! They’ve also changed colors from a brownish hue to a grey and white theme. From further observation I’ve also determined that there wasn’t one gull family with 4 chicks; there were two gull families with two chicks each.

I made myself comfortable next to the water about 30 ft away from this family and put the 1.4 TC on the 100-400 so that I wouldn’t disturb them. While I was taking photos over about an hour, they worked their way toward me until they were about 15 ft. away. Then ‘Mom’ flew over and set on a rock right beside me, settled down and went to sleep! The kids followed and the next thing I knew I was trying to shoot photos from 5 ft. away with way too much lens! I took the 1.4 TC off and put it in my pocket and was able to get a whole bunch of great photos of which this is one. I’ll be posting some of them in the avian galleries later.

Sony a6500, FE 100-400 GM @ 336 mm. , ISO-250, f/8.0, 1/3200, Hand held.

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Gary Minish

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Just a side note: not part of the challenge. Here is a portrait of ‘Mother Mew’ taken right after she landed on the rock next to me on the beach. This was taken at 276 mm with no crop.

Beautiful shot, Gary. The details are really wonderful. I like the wing position as well. Those water droplets are a nice addition. Looks like the chick is really enjoying herself. Nice capture.

Gary, I love those kinds of wildlife experiences where you sit quietly for enough time and the critter’s accept your presence. I once had a grey squirrel start climbing my leg, thinking I was a tree! The action in the bathing bird, with all the flying water looks great. I’ve been working on Dragonflies in flight and am thinking that 1/2000 and 1/2500 still shows some motion blur (at least some times) so seeing that this was at 1/3200 pushes me on.

The head shot of mom is great, with terrific whites, fine details in her eyes and an inviting background.