On The Wing II

I seem to be developing a theme of birds in flight this evening, so I'm going to run with it. All these shots were taken down at Quick Point Nature Preserve in Sarasota on Saturday night. I meant to go to the beach proper, but the shooting was so good that I never made it. I also wanted to prove to myself that the oil hasn't made it down here yet, but I'm sure they'll be screaming about it when that happens. We're all dreading it, believe me. Anyhow, I was pretty proud of the shot above, managing to squeeze two black skimmers into the same shot.

I was even more excited when one of them started skimming not too far from where I was! Only time I'd ever seen them do this before was well after sunset when there was almost no light to be had.  See how he drops the bottom half of that funny looking bill of his into the water as he glides mere inches from the surface?  It's a wonder he ever catches anything, but it must work.

Then when I caught both of them skimming at the same time I got about as excited as I could get. Unfortunately, they were pretty far away at this point, so the pictures aren't that great. But I was still pretty happy to catch it. They only passed by once, then they came in to land on a sandbar near where you see those seagulls. All sorts of flying critters were beginning to gather their, I guess for the night, or at least until the tide came back in.