Field Notes
The Indian skimmer is one of the most extraordinary birds I have photographed, and one of the most endangered. Its lower mandible is longer than the upper, and it feeds by flying low with that blade slicing the water's surface, snapping shut the instant it touches a fish.
I photographed them at Kakinada on the coast of Andhra Pradesh, one of the shrinking number of places this river-nesting bird can still be found. Tied to undisturbed sandbars and clean rivers, the skimmer is exactly the kind of species I most want people to slow down and notice before it is gone.
