This image is of three Red Necked Avocets photographed at Alfred Cove, Perth, Western Australia with my Nikon D800E and Nikon 80-400mm zoom lens.  I often visit the river before work to see in the dawn and take photos in the most beautiful light of day.  On this day I was walking along the shoreline waiting for something to happen.  It was an unusual day in that the Egrets, Heron, Stilts and Osprey I usually see were absent.  My attention was caught by a flock of birds coming toward me.  The pattern of flight was different and not one that I recognised.  As they came closer I realised I had never seen these birds before.  They landed in a shallow tidal pond further along the shoreline and I carefully crept closer trying to position myself between the birds and the rising sun.  As I got closer I lowered my body into a crouch and noticed the beautiful colours reflecting on the water.  The dawn light had caught the Samphire vegetation and was reflecting it onto the water in shades of soft green and burnt orange which were changing in intensity and shade by the second.  Combined with the rich earth reds of the Avocets, the effect was stunning.  There were about ten Avocets however they were all doing their own thing.  Within the ten there seemed to be a few pairs and, at one point I captured these two together but looking in different directions across the pond.   I love the golden quality of the dawn light in this image, creating shimmery colourful reflections and accentuating the rich earthy red of the birds plumage.