Terns at Boulders Beach, Cape Peninsula, S. Africa 4 January 2009

Sometimes I just take pictures of random groups of terns. There’s nearly always a colour-ringed bird in a large group of birds, and if you take a series of pictures and then pore over them carefully afterwards you’ll find it. The pictures are seldom interesting, being designed to spot rings and not for anything else.

Last year in January I photographed a group of Sandwich and Great Crested Tern at Boulders Beach. I actually found a colour-ringed tern in picture afterwards, with a numbered ring that was part obscured so I could not see the number (!) but I also had some fun cropping out bits of the pictures and saturating the colours. This little slice of a picture is something that could have inspired Charley Harper to do something fun, I think.