A juvenile bald eagle was attempting to take a young gull. Eagles in this area do that. The adult gull was making sure it wasn't going to happen. By the time I had the camera up, the gull was already in flight, climbing fast, putting itself between the eagle and the nest with the kind of decision-making that comes from instinct rather than reflection.
The eagle was bigger. The gull was faster. The gull won.
I had maybe four seconds to shift the lens off the surf and onto the fight, which is a transition that almost never lands in focus. This one did. The print is the only frame I got — the eagle peeled off shortly after — and it remains one of the few action sequences in my archive where I was in the right place by pure accident.
A mother defending what was hers, on a beach where I was watching my own kids in the water.
