Feathered Friends Show me a Photo - WINGS

Here's my entry for this week's Show Me A Photo contest in the Feathered Friends community - the theme is WINGS.

I'm glad for this prompt because it nudged me to finally spend some time processing photos I took last December. My wife and I took a short vacation to a tiny cabin to get a break from our kids after months without a moment of quiet in pandemic isolation with them. While she read books and took naps, I did a couple of long hikes with my camera.

On the second day I went to a nature center along a lake. There were some cardinals, sparrows and chickadees in the woods as usual, but when I made it down to the lake I was rewarded with something I don't ever see at home - a large flock of seagulls and a large flock of cormorants were both taking advantage of the peaceful water.

This presented some challenges for me as a photographer; I'm still roughly a beginner at this, and I haven't shot a lot of birds on water. The trail wound around a small peninsula jutting into the lake, and the winter afternoon lighting was very difficult on one side of it. Still, I had a great time watching this huge assembly of birds and I think I got a few good snaps out of the trip.

This first shot is my contest entry - the way the cormorants took flight from the water was greatly entertaining, and this was my best attempt at capturing the noise and chaos of a group taking off all at once.

Now just for fun, here are a few more photos from that weekend:

I'm pretty pleased with this one aesthetically, but it also gives a hint of just how many birds were out there. It was impossible for me to get a good shot showing the full scale of the situation.