A SERIA SUNRISE. THE MORNING AFTER.

After an entire day of shooting from an Air Force Bell 212 helicopter yesterday plus slightly over an hour’s commute back  home in Seria, I turned in earlier than usual. I had also run out of Nescafe Gold so there in the absence of stimulants I decided not to fight fatigue and gave in. But before that, I mustered enough energy head out for a light Japanese dinner with my wife.

Check out the egrets formation over  the lake below—to soar higher than the birds was quite simply divine—I had less than 10 seconds window to take this shot and it was really the hardest ten seconds of decision making I’ve had to make realizing that if I made the wrong one, I might not have a second chance so I took it anyway with the 24-70mm! I wish I had a second 5DII with the 70-200mm mounted.

Thing is this, I normally have on an average about 6 hours of sleep so having an earlier-than-usual night meant I got up earlier than usual too. But that’s not the reason I captured this beautiful dramatic sunrise—the sun had just risen half way and in a few minutes, the scene would be completely different.

It used to be that I fancied the hornbills more than the egrets because of their rarity and relatively small in numbers. But lately, that changed when I began noticing interesting flight patterns of the heron or Burong Apuh as they’re known locally and began taking an interest in their behaviour—which is rather unpredictable.

In my last post When Birds Get Territorial, there were birds in my neighbourhood that were obviously not in good terms with one another and I now know why—green cicadas which are smaller than the black ones and I guess being smaller makes them easier to peck at.

These mean looking black cicadas are a common sight and if the birds favoured them along with the green ones, there wouldn’t be any to photograph knowing how sharp their eyes are when it comes to food especially the inanimate ones like sitting duck.