A fish out of water…

The splash that you see in the feature photo is usually the first thing that catches your eye whenever you are out by a body of water taking pictures. The jumping fish are called mullet, and the fishermen catch them by throwing nets off a pier and gathering them up. I think I assumed that they jump for the fun of it, but one day when we saw dolphins along the fishing pier at Anclote Gulf Park people said that they were chasing the mullet, and quite a fun (for us) episode ensued. Life and death was at stake. We were at Homosassa Springs park on this particular day when we saw a splash across the water. Since then I have always tried to get a picture of a ‘fish out of water,’ but it has proven to be an elusive shot. My new camera with its burst mode gave me some shots, finally, but what I got wasn’t what I expected.

In this case it was a cormorant who was gazing on the water looking for lunch that started the excitement,

You can barely see any of their body, just their neck and head, as they swim. And his potential lunch is that ripple ahead of him.

And there he is, my first fish out of water. I don’t know what I expected exactly, but not two googly eyes looking at me.

I had to laugh as I looked at the pictures, I think the fish looks like a cartoon.

You get the idea. I’ll spare you the rest of the series since he stays in this same position throughout, just rising higher until he is up in front of the greenery, and then comes back down exactly as he went up. I have no idea if he managed to escape his fate on this day. But I was rooting for him.

It’s an adventure to go out for pictures, not knowing what you may find that day. And it’s also fun to click through your pictures later on the computer and find out what exactly you did get.