Little Auks Alle alle

In early November 1975, travelling by bike from my then home in Goxhill to the Humber estuary at Goxhill Haven in a strong and cold north-east wind, I had no idea what birds to hope for and was therefore amazed to see a flock of Little Auks tracking west up the Humber. An amazing encounter that was to be repeated over following years when the right conditions prevailed in November. With the ability to take images of these arctic waifs in gale force winds on DSLR equipment I tried for many years to get images that I liked and that showed the birds battling with the weather as they headed back up the North Sea. I lost some good images, taken in about 2011, during a computer problem but November 5th 2014 looked to be a perfect day to try again. Northerly gales over the preceding days had moved good numbers of Little Auks down the North Sea and a bright and sunny day with the continuing wind on the 5th saw good numbers of these diminutive seabirds heading back northwards, often close inshore. During the day we counted 62 moving off Sutton-on-Sea. Trying to get images though was going to be tough in the buffeting wind but I positioning myself at the tide edge, dodging the bigger waves, and bracing my camera and lens on a monopod. The results though, were what I had hoped for and I was able to track a few birds heading north and get some pleasing images of which this shot with the cappuccino froth of a breaking wave framing the dainty birds is my best and one of my favourite images ever. It tells a story and shows the birds in their environment just how we see them, not a full frame portrait but seabirds at sea and the swirls of cappuccino froth just give it a final punch.

Canon 1DX with Canon 500f4II and 1.4x converter on monopod;

ISO 1000, 2500th at f6.3