It has been about a month since I have visited my favourite stretch of the Swan River and as with everything the scene has changed. The vegetation has dried right off, the little white flowers are gone, the piles of washed up stringy green algae have rotted away and the birds are different. It is a place that is wonderfully peaceful and always interesting.
On Thursday afternoon I was walking along the bank watching the fairy terns fishing. They are tiny, intense and super fast acrobatic birds. Their aerial manoeuvres are incredible and very difficult to photograph due to the speed and unpredictability.
The zoom through the air twisting and turning in all directions, then, when they spot a fish switch into hover mode, line up and dive vertically hitting the water beak first with a large splash. Most of the dives are successful and they emerge out of water to take flight with a tiny fish which is usually swallowed in mid air.
I was watching a group of these birds doing their thing when I noticed that one individual was flying in a large loop with a fish in its beak while making a different call. It kept swooping low over the bank and wasn't swallowing its fish. My eye was drawn down and then I saw them, two beautiful baby terns. They still had the slightly fluffy baby feathers and the speckled patterns which blended with the seaweed and beach debris and their eyes were focussed intently on the adult bird with the fish in its beak. Mum or Dad continued to fly low over the babies so they could see the fish while calling continually, trying to get the babies to takeoff and fly out over the water. Fascinated, I found a spot under a tree and sat in the sand to watch.
After several more low swoops the tiny parent bird landed. As it came in all four babies started squawking intently and moved toward it. One lucky one was rewarded with the fish which was swallowed in one gulp. The rest missed out, but not for long as the other parent soon appeared and did exactly the same thing.
I watched the pattern repeat itself several times. After a while two more birds appeared from the sky, came within a few meters of the shore and hovered low, diving exceptionally close to shore. This is unusual and when I looked through the lens I noticed the birds also appeared a bit different!!
I have spent hours trying to photograph terns diving and you have to be lucky. Every now and then it happens right in front of you but not often and usually when you are not expecting it. Their dives are incredibly fast. To capture the moment they hit the water you really have to have the camera focussed on the flying bird before it begins to dive. It is then a matter of keeping it trained on the bird as it speeds toward the water. Usually I just end up with a series of blurred photos which would be fantastic, if only they were in focus!!
The two birds continued to dive very close and I actually managed to get a couple of shots. Strangely, they didn't catch anything. It was when they came into land that I realised they were also babies.
The unusual behaviour was actually fishing training, occurring close to shore under the watchful eye of their parents. I continued to watch as the parents fished teasing the babies with low swoops which encouraged them to fly and practice diving. Every now and then one parent would land and give a fish to the closest or the loudest baby.
I could have watched all day, but lunch was over and I headed back to the office. I came back on Friday morning but the Fairy Terns were no where to be seen. Hoping to see them again I came back in my lunch hour and was really happy to find them a little further along the bank. The babies were a little more confident and I was rewarded with the same interesting behaviour and some more shots. I visited again after work and they were still there practising their flying and diving. They no longer seemed scared of me and I was able to sit about ten meters away in the sand and watch. I was very lucky to see one of the parents fly in and land with a big blue Long Tom fish and feed it to a hungry baby right in front of me, resulting in some nice shots. Extremely interesting and a fantastic end to the week.
