Moment in Time

Moments in time always pass, but some you don’t get to appreciate for long. Here we can appreciate the moment encapsulating these two animals. One loosing it’s life, the other fueling their own. The struggle for survival is cruel and demanding. Both the sand crab and Snowy Egret were feeding in the few moments surrounding the captured moment, but only one would continue through time. We don’t often see or look at the daily happenings of life when looking at these animals feeding. We often only see for a fraction of a second that a bird caught some food, and then it ate it, now its gone. But here, we can take all the time we want to observe and appreciate the circle of life.

I spent over an hour near this Snowy Egret, photographing it in the surf with my knees and elbows in the sand with waves nearly ruining my camera. Every time it caught a sand crab, it would run away from the waves back in my direction, and then turn to the side to eat. This time, it came directly towards me, turned, and launched the helpless sand crab into the air. At the time I was unsure if I managed to capture the moment (my camera does not shoot many pictures per second, so I need a bit of luck and good timing) that the crab was in the air or not, but when I got home and reviewed the days photos, I was overjoyed. The pleasant combination of blue and white in the background matched the tones of the Egret and made the crab pop in the photo. I think I will cherish this photo for some time to come.