The Birds

It's been a while since I added anything here. Part of it is laziness, but more of it is the fact that I just plain haven't gotten out to do much shooting lately. Life always seems to get in the way.

This past weekend we took a trip up to Salt Lake City to pick up a dog. (Thats a whole 'nuther story) It was just supposed to be a quick up and back trip, so there wasn't a lot of time set aside for sightseeing. But we did arrive a little earlier than expected on Saturday, so we thought we'd drive up to "The Lake" to see what it looked like. Turned out to be a lot further than we thought, and before long we decided we'd all had enough driving for one day and there wouldn't be enough time to get there and back anyway. So we stopped at a small nature preserve at the south end of the lake.


It was a pleasant afternoon, a bit overcast with a light breeze, but not terribly cold. There were lots of families with their kids fishing around the lake, and many people just strolling around enjoying the fresh air. Lots of ducks paddling quietly around, some coming right up to us looking for handouts.

Then apparently somebody across the pond started to throw bread in to the water for the ducks.

Remember the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds"?

Within seconds we were surrounded by hundreds of gulls - all screeching and diving in to the water to steal whatever they could from the duck population. They must have been calling all their friends to the feast as well, because they just kept coming and coming.

I snapped off a few photos to record the novelty of it all...looking at them after the fact though, they almost look fake - like the gulls were photoshopped in. But they aren't. We were indeed surrounded.

And yes, that is smoke you see in the background. There were fires burning off in the distance. We couldn't really tell what they were though. It almost looked like an intentional burn of some sort.