5th January 2007, Wollongong.

Seagulls and sparrows; both thrive with people.

I often observe sparrows, hopping around people’s feet, on chair backs, and barriers of outdoor eating areas. They are invisible – nobody pays them any attention. They also seem to be appearing more and more in supermarkets and large indoor shopping centres.

Seagulls are amazing flyers: so often I have seen them hovering around the food in someone’s hand. 

Photographically, I spent most of my time in Wollongong trying to capture pictures of birds, pelicans mostly. It was a real challenge – the camera I had was way to slow to focus on something like a flying bird. It is for shots like this that you really need an slr.

I had to pre set the focus at a distance that I thought I would be likely to get the picture. There were other challenges, but that was the main one.

In the last photo, the seagull is hovering just above a man’s head; the man was eating.

(c) Andrew Calder

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