Most days in the fall, with binoculars or a spotting scope, you can see Northern Gannets off the beach in Cape May, New Jersey. They are generally fishing the waters well beyond naked-eye view. You might catch a glimmer of white from the winds as they turn, a shimmer on the horizon, but it is mostly faith that brings the binoculars or the scope up to scan the distance for these magnificent birds. And faith is generally rewarded. They are out there most days.

The Northern Gannet is a big bird. It is a yard long, with five to six foot wings, and weighs six and a half pounds. That is very heavy for a bird. They nest in the North Atlantic, almost 70% on rocky islands off the UK. I have seen at least one pair nesting as far south as Machias Island, off Rockland Maine, but that was very unusual. Generally they only enter US waters in late fall, through the winter, and into early spring. They spread down the US coast and around the Caribbean and just into Mexican waters. And as I say, they generally fish well out to sea, diving from a hundred feet in the air, completely submerging with a splash that could easily be mistaken for a whale spouting, coming back to the surface and taking flight with any prey.

Saturday morning, the coming storm (Hurricane Sandy is scheduled to make landfall right over Cape May on Tuesday morning) had driven the Gannets in, and there were hundreds of them…more likely thousands of them…visible just off-shore just after dawn. I watched them from the top of the dune behind the The Meadows (The Nature Conservancy’s Cape May Migratory Bird Sanctuary) and then walked out to a hundred yards from the tide line for even closer views. I had never seen so many Gannets so close. There were two local birders out there on the beach and they had never seen so many Gannets so close either.

The first image is a group of Gannets fishing what as apparently a fairly concentrated school of fish just off the beach and between me and the sunrise (well buried in clouds). (The line of birds low in the frame are Scoters.) The light was a challenge. It was after dawn but the heavy clouds kept it pretty dim. I switched to Sports mode for some flight shots, but again these images are pushing the boundaries of what is possible. They look pretty good at this size, but you would not be impressed if you viewed them 1 to 1 on a large monitor. They look more like clever drawings than photographs at that size…and, in essence, they are just that. The camera’s software used the data collected by the sensor to draw an image of the bird using tiny little dots of color…and in this light, there was barely enough data. Still, considering the conditions, and the difficulty of flight shots in the first place, I am pretty happy with the results.

And for the Sunday Thought: this new camera has features that are constantly tempting me to attempt the impossible. Really the light Saturday morning was just too dim for flight shots, to dim and flat for photography of any kind. A conventional DSLR and long lens (half the 1200mm focal length of the zoom on the Canon SX50HS) would have had extreme difficulty finding focus on these moving birds in the dawn murk. Yet, in Sports Mode, the SX50HS locked on, and, despite my lack of practice with flying birds, I was able to frame and follow the birds as I shot bursts of 10 frames. Sports Mode automatically pushes the ISO to 800 and above to give faster shutter speeds, and switches in 5 frames per second burst mode with focus between frames.

Considering what the camera had to deal with, I have no right to quibble with the results. These images would not have been possible at all without the advanced features of this little Point & Shoot Super-zoom. So when I blow them up very large and look very close, and see the less than perfect rendering, I try to remember not to compare them to what I had hoped to see…but to compare them to no image at all! By that standard, they are pretty good indeed.

Shifting to a spiritual view, I am thinking that we need to be tempted to attempt the spiritually impossible more often…you know, things like unconditional love, absolute generosity, self-less giving and self-less living, and even intimacy with the pure light of creation. The best we might manage is enough to make a rough sketch of the reality of those experiences, but then, we should remember to judge those sketches, rough and imperfect as they must be when we blow them up large and look close, by the standard of how they compare to no sketch at all. A very rough rendering in action of unconditional love would transform most of us…and any attempt at self-less giving and self-less living has to be more satisfying than the alternative. And just the tiniest glimpse of the pure light of creation, filtered through the imperfect medium of our lives and haltingly shared with others, is so much better than the darkness of unbelief!

We have to be thankful for any image of Gannets against the dawn.