One photo a day challenge: Day 107.

Today I was down at our local park, Eldridge Park, hoping to see some migratory birds. Each year I see some migratory birds stop over here on their way farther north. This year, however, I did not see many of the ones I was hoping to.

One fun thing that can happen is even if you don’t see what you were hoping for, you can still see something unexpected. Today I saw Terns at the park. I am not sure I have ever seen them there. They did a couple circuits of the lake and then flew off.

The Terns hung out just long enough for me to get some photos. The sky was completely cloudy and overcast so the photos won’t be anything to write home about, but still I nice record to have.

Osprey

Then just as I was heading to my car I look back over at the lake and there is an Osprey circling over the lake. I decided to make may way back to the lake and see if I can capture my first Osprey photos of the year.

As I mentioned before the sky was completely overcast so I wasn’t expecting anything magical to happen photographically. I decided to be really picky and only take a much more selected series of photos at angles I really liked.

Then I got lucky. The Osprey dove into the water and caught a fish. The Osprey was on the opposite side of the lake from me but still always cool to see.

I tracked the Osprey as he took off and tried to capture some images of the escapee with a meal. My camera setting were not going to be ideal for this. I was going to have a relatively low shutter speed. Hard to capture the Osprey without it being blurry.

I was going to do my best and hope for a little luck. The Osprey stay across the lake from me. Maybe that worked to my advantage.

My shutter speed turned out to be 1/125 of a second for this photo. It is not a great photo but I am very happy with it. I was able to pan with the Osprey well enough to keep the osprey sharp. And I captured the wing beat and the wings a blurred with motion. I really like that. It would be nicer if the Osprey had come closer, but you take what you can get.