Skimmer Outlier

Taken at San Joaquin Wildlife Preserve, Irvine, CA August 25, 2012

We have been blessed with a bumper crop of Black Skimmers this past few months at Bolsa Chica, which is a salt water lagoon across Pacific Coast Highway from the beach, although they are migrating now and we only saw a handful last weekend. On the fourth of July, we saw two Skimmers here at San Joaquin, which is a fresh water preserve a mile inland from the eastern tip of Newport Back Bay. When this photo was taken yesterday, this Skimmer was alone at the pond, and skimmed through the middle of a group of shore birds several times scattering them. He finally landed among them and eventually moved onto shore where he stayed for hours. We hoped to catch him taking off, but had to leave before he departed that location.

Nikon D800 Nikkor 200-400mm 380mm f/8 ISO 500 1/1250 manual white balance auto spot metering