Scratching the itch

During the same visit to the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge that garnered me the whale photos I posted a while back, I also took this sequence of shots of an Albatross as it flew past me. More specifically, one of the many Laysan Albatrosses that had established a nesting colony on one of the nearby hills. Their bodies are usually less than 3 feet long, but their wingspan averages between 6 and 7 feet—when they go by with their wings outstretched, it's pretty damn impressive sight to behold.

At the time that I took these photos, I felt very fortunate that this particular bird was both close enough and slow enough as it went by to allow me to get a bunch of shots that were all basically in focus and within the frame. I had a feeling it was a good sequence that would yield at least one nice image of the bird as it soared past, but since there were so many other things to photograph I barely had any time to really examine the pictures on my LCD screen. It was only when I'd gotten that day's photos downloaded that I realized there was a lot more to the shots than I possibly could have hoped for—I'd captured this Albatross scratching its head with its foot as it soared along:













Pretty cool, huh?