CHEROKEE SUN PHOTOGRAPHY: Black Skimmer Rookery At Indian Shores

Black skimmers are unique birds. Just their appearance alone is eye-catching with their bright red beaks and legs contrasted against a black and white body. But they are especially unique when they go fishing. It's amazing to watch these birds skim along the water at a pretty good clip with that lower jaw submerged in the water skimming for whatever small fish can be found. And they are pretty good at what they do.

Just last week we visited the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary in Indian Shores, FL as we do from time to time. By the way, this is a great place to support with donations as they do wonderful work with injured birds and waterfowl, helping them to heal and rehab. But as we walked out the back side of the sanctuary to the beach, I noticed that there were a lot of black skimmers in the area cruising the shallow water for food.

After looking around we noticed that there was an area on the beach a little farther north that was roped off and we quickly realized that this was where the black skimmers were laying their eggs. Of course, this makes a nature photographer very happy to have all of these great birds in one location, so I spent quite a bit of time there getting plenty of images into my camera.

Interestingly, after talking with some of the local folks we learned that the black skimmer colony in past years has been much larger than it is this year and nobody seems to know why. But for me, it was plenty big enough to get some great shots of the males strutting their stuff and the females protecting their eggs in the sand.

Here are some of the shots I got that day: