The weekend was here and it had been a long week at work. I decided to grab the camera and enjoy the morning light by the lake. Maybe there would be something to photograph. Maybe there wouldn’t. The idea was to take in a nice late spring morning. The sun periodically made an appearance as clouds and rain were moving in from the west. I was hoping for something practice with as I wanted to test my long lens which had tipped over the previous weekend due to one leg of my tripod collapsed.  Soon after getting set up I noticed a white bird flying back and forth over this lake. It seemed like a gull but that would do for testing the lens.

Unfortunately there were more clouds than sun which doesn’t work very well with a long zoom lens. Especially since I have an extender on it also. I’m not able to get a very fast shutter speed in lower light but why should that stop me from trying. Aiming towards this bird, I got it in the crosshairs and began firing away. The photos kept coming back blurry so I made some adjustments and kept working with it. Eventually I captured a somewhat sharper image and could see this was not a gull but likely a tern of some sort. Turning the camera to a family of geese I captured a few shots. These were nice and sharp. The lens seems to still work well.

Back to the white tern, I continued taking photo after photo and managed to get some sharper imagines. Not great photos but decent captures. The bird was so far away that even with a long lens I wasn’t able to zoom in enough. Even so, getting a shot of the tern taking a drink (top image), catching a fish (above), and looking straight down into the water (below) made for a fun early morning. Soon a second tern joined in and they both fished for awhile. After catching several fish they flew off ending my session with them. About to pack up I spotted something larger flying overhead and quickly sat back down behind the camera. It was an Osprey. This larger bird just did a quick flyover and was gone. By now the dark clouds of rain filled the sky reducing my light even more. I decided it was time to head for home before the thunder and lighting made it’s way overhead. Still a fun way to start the day.