Ospreys flying with fish, big fish, and the story

I've never seen ospreys climbing high into the air, then diving into the water, then exiting the water with huge fish! Then for them to do all of this in the middle of a gator feeding frenzy was off the charts exciting. You don't have this kind of experience very often, if ever. For the record, I get super excited when this kind of event happens, and then tend to lose track of what I'm trying to do.  Consequently, I lose focus. (no pun intended) Would I have figured out the issue was with the ISO on the spot? No way, it was a somewhat complicated issue and you don't have time in the field to diagnose these kind of issues. So how exciting was it? Just after entering the park, a ranger in a vehicle stopped and told there were flocks of spoonbills feeding and nesting along with great blue herons if we went left at the walkway fork. If we went right, a longer walk, there was a gator 'feeding frenzy.' So, which way to go? We elected to go left and see the spoonbills and herons as you just don't see spoonbills very often, and never in Albuquerque. The herons were catching fish and the spoonbills were flying about. 

This is when the first issue popped up with the camera/tripod. I had planned in advance to bring the tripod and larger lens as this was our second trip to the park. The tripod and lens were just too cumbersome, and catching birds in flight was next to impossible. So, I hurried back to the car to ditch the tripod and larger lens. When I got back to the birds, one person of our group of four had already made it over to the gators, so there was a little self-induced pressure to catch up, which I did. Eventually I made it over to the gators which were located in a large pond, part of the larger swamp and there were maybe 20 or more gators, large and small. The gators had realized that the water level was low, which in turn concentrated the fish into a smaller volume of water. The poor fish didn't have a chance! The gators diving for fish caused large 'boils' of water. Other gators were bellowing, some so loud and deep you could feel it in your chest. In a few circumstances the fish were so large the gators would catch the fish sideways and then have to toss it in the air to turn it so they could swallow it. In the middle of all of this, ospreys are diving in the midst of the gators and catching fish too! This is the first opportunity for you to see that the images (especially the ospreys) are not in focus and grainy, which was very disappointing.




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