Underneath...

It was a lovely early spring morning for a walk along the river. The brilliant sunlight shone through the emerging hawthorn leaves emphasising their freshness and delicacy. The valley echoed to the tapping of the greater spotted-woodpecker, hunting for grubs in the top of the willow trees.

Towards the end of the walk I noticed a succession of young black-headed gulls flying along the river backwater, and plunging to catch fish from underneath the water. This is the second day I've observed this type of behaviour, and today I had the time to try and catch the sequence of events. It proved remarkably difficult to catch the exact point of the plunge, and this was my best effort. If you look at this in large you can see the water splash made when the gull landed and (look really hard!) the prey in its beak. The whole sequence of events can be seen here.

This is my rather tenuous entry for this weeks challenge 'Underneath' as the gull is plucking its prey from underneath the water!