Here Are 31 Finalists Of This Year’s Bird Photographer Of The Year Contest

#21 Shag By Gábor Li
Last summer, while on a family holiday in Croatia, I spent time photographing shags. One of my goals was to take a photo of them underwater, but it was a lot harder than I first thought. Although they didn’t care about me, when they were on land, they were much more cautious when they were underwater. I didn’t want to bother them, so my tactic was patience. I waited in the water for hours, next to the rock where they were roosting and from which I assumed they would jump and submerge. But in contrast to my expectations, I found they swam away to find a group of fish, and only then would they dive. I was starting to lose patience and almost gave up. However, eventually, my persistence paid off: encouraged to dive by a nearby swimmer, one of the shags jumped into the water in front of me and dived a few meters. I followed the bird under the water and took a few pictures of it almost blindly. I was very happy with the result. My favorite thing about this image is that you can see the sparkly spot lit by the setting sun where the bird submerged.