This short article features a gull’s attempted meal steal from an egret fishing at one of the ponds at Hendrie Valley. These eight consecutive images were captured handheld using a frame rate of 18 frames-per-second in continuous auto-focus.

Late last week I visited Hendrie Valley with a friend. It is getting pretty late in the season so we weren’t sure what to expect. Luckily there were more than two dozen egrets at one of the ponds. Many of them were actively fishing, probably trying to fatten up before their migration south.

I was spooling into temporary memory some photographs of an egret holding a fish in its bill, when a gull burst into my composition. I instinctively fully depressed my shutter release which enabled me to capture this attempted meal steal.

The eight consecutive images in this attempted meal steal were captured in less than 1/2 second. The birds were approximately 100 metres (~328 feet) away.

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

I love capturing these types of ‘slice of life’ bird interactions, and view them as gifts from Mother Nature. One never knows what special moments may be waiting for us when we’re out with our cameras!

Technical Note:

Photographs were captured handheld using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. Images were produced from RAW files using my standard approach in post. I used a combination of Pro Capture L and Bird Detection AI Subject Tracking with these images. I used a single auto-focus point. Pro Capture L was set for 10 Pre-Shutter frames with the Frame Limiter turned off. This is the 1,219 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.

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