President’s Column – January 2021

Peter Hockley: Australian Crested Grebes

Happy New Year to you all. I hope you all had a brilliant Christmas and
I wonder how many of you found new camera gear under the
Christmas tree. Last January, in this column, I was hopeful the start of
the new decade would bring all things good. My prediction didn’t start
well, did it? But, I’m sure everything will improve and the world will get
back to normal eventually.
A while back, also in this column, I talked about missed opportunities in photography. Well, I have learned my lesson and it paid off. On a warm, calm morning in December, we set off for a day’s fishing on Lake Benmore. We launched the boat at Sailors Cutting and as we were  puttering out to the lake I espied an Australasian Crested Grebe with chicks on her back. Dilemma! Do we continue on and go fishing before the wind comes up and, hopefully, photograph the Grebes on our return? Or do we stop right now and capture this reasonably rare occurrence? Remembering what I had said earlier about missed opportunities, I stopped the boat, grabbed the camera and happily snapped away as this Grebe with a couple of chicks on board calmly drifted by at just a few meters distance. We were in the right place at
the right time!
Happy with the many shots taken we then carried out onto Benmore where, although the weather stayed warm and calm, the fishing was lousy and on our return to the boat ramp, the Grebes were nowhere to be seen.

You make your own luck. Lesson learned!

See you soon

Peter Hockley