Black Headed Gull

We were anchored off Fujairah, and these gulls after a long day of fishing used the railings of the ship as a place to hangout. The birds here are non-breeding adults and spend this time socializing with each other. Probably, nothing interests a gull more than the small ritualistic display of other gulls, before they can perch themselves; maybe the gull way of saying 'Hi'. During the breeding season, the head of the bird gets a darker shade.
As long as I didn't make any sudden movement, these birds let me come close to them. Some of them were not even bothered by my presence or the camera tripod.

White Wagtail

The Wagtail prefers bare areas for feeding, where it can see and pursue its prey. This bird was foraging on my ship's deck for the entire day and never let me photograph it. Because of its constant movement, I had to keep moving with the bird and after pursuing it for hours, I finally gave up. Late in the evening, when the cold Persian gulf wind began blowing, this little bird came close to where I was standing to take shelter from the cold wind. It's is at this time that I set up my tripod and finally managed to photograph it. Mission accomplished.
f/4.5 , 1/10 sec

Dragonfly

Ever wondered how a dragon fly stares at you! This photograph will satisfy your curiosity. The image was captured with macro mode and an additional lens in front of the camera so as to magnify the dragon fly. Lighting did not pose a problem since the fly was well lit by the setting sun which gave it warm tones. I had to do a bit of cropping in photoshop to delete out some part of the image which got distorted because of my crude macro photography arrangement. If your budget or cameras don't permit you a macro lens, feel free to use any lens to magnify it .Errors can then be rectified with photoshop.

f/2.7 , 1/100 sec

Hoopoe

Nothing Gives me more pleasure when sailing, than wake up one morning and find a Hoopoe perched outside you cabin. That is what exactly happened here. The image is not as sharp as i wanted it to be, because I have clicked it through my cabins porthole( nautical term for Window) which sports a toughened glass. The pipelines of the ship are visible in the background and to blur out the rust of my 20 year old ship, shot this photograph with a large aperture.
f/4.5, 1/250 sec.

Barn Swallow

Because of the way this bird spreads its wings, it is a photographer's delight especially while in flight. These photographs were clicked at Sikka in Gujarat. It's a migratory bird of India. Since these birds feed on flying insects, they are airborne for most of the time, which makes photographing difficult, its only in the evening that I had a chance of capturing images of a few perched birds.
The second image in the series is actually one in a continuous frame of photographs, and freezes the moment of the birds take off. The first image has a bit of over exposed background. I had to do spot metering of the bird to get the details of the darker areas of the body and the shadow regions because of which I had to overexpose the blue background, and since the bird occupied most of the frame, I decided to go ahead with it.

Bottlenose Dolphins

Photographed these sea beauties in the middle of the Arabian Sea. It's a different feel to see these creatures in the wild, playing along with their brood. A couple of these curious mammals did come close to my Ship to investigate it and swam along with her for about a mile, until a new batch of dolphins took over and continued swimming ahead of the ship's bow for another mile or so and were replaced by yet another batch for another mile. It seemed like the dolphins were escorting my ship as we passed through their wild territory. Since these mammals need to surface every 5-6 minutes to breathe, we at sea, see these mammals often, especially in warm waters.