I was blessed with watching this pair of Laughing Gulls going through their mating rituals this past Saturday afternoon on a 3 mile stretch of beach with not another soul in site.
They danced around one another and bobbed heads rhythmically back and forth for some time and then the female began touching her beak against his.
He then opened his moth and she inserted her head deeply into his gullet ans they both quivered, eventually extracting a long orange string of his offering...something I witnessed last year as well.
This image was created at the moment after her bill tapping pushed him over the edge and he allowed her inside in preparation to receive his offfering....
Nikon D300, 500 VR, TC14EII, ISO 800, F8, 1/1250, UniWB preset, flat linear tione curve, CW metering with +1 EV applied.
Captured everything except the actually breeding as a lesser black back gull flew in and broke the love birds up...after a half hour of all of this wonderful activity.
Unfortunately I didn't realize until I spotted the yellow legs on the black back and didn't have time to respond...it's a gull I've always wanted to photograph :(
I wouldn't have guessed this is part of their mating ritual. Great capture of this behavior, good details and exposure control, too. I would run NR on the BG.
It is moments such as this one which bring me to stay with a subject / subjects if possible and watch and learn the intricacies of their existence.
For me, once I watch and understand what's going on, it then becomes a challenge / goal to attempt to capture a specific moment such as this.
My preparation for creatimg laughing gull breeding images actually began a year ago when I first observed (but did not yet fully understand) what was going on.
Same beach, same nesting colony and a year later with some sucess :)
Interesting behaviour Jim. I like the exposure in this, good detail, and well done for making them stand out against the BG. I agree some NR would work on the BG.
That's the best, being witness of such a wonderful scene. And a good capture as well. I think this would have been even better on a lighter beach, as this would make them stand out better. But nothing much you can do about that, your just a witness. Great work.
Some NR would help here IMO, specially to the BG, great natural moment and exposure, colors, poses, detail and sharpness are truely amazing! Congratulaitons!
Interesting as I DID run NR selectively on the background...not once, but twice. I ran no NR on the subjects themselves or the foreground.
Upon examination of the original RAW file converted to TIFF at high magnification....it doesn't appear to be noise and I wonder if it isn't heat waves as I could see them wafting up from the sand behind the birds through the viewfinder.
I'll have to try this with a Gaussian blur instead of NR...I'm sure that this would smooth the background behind the birds.
Deep Throat ~ Laughing Gull Style
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