Unlucky salmon leaps into lucky dolphin's mouth
This is the amazing moment a fleeing salmon landed right in a pursuing dolphin's mouth.
The top catch was caught on camera by wildlife tour guide Sarah Pern off the east coast of Scotland.
See also: Britain's best islands for wildlife spotting
The images show the moment the Bottlenose dolphin snapped up the huge salmon before swallowing it head first.
Sarah runs EcoVentures Cromarty and insisted that in all her 23 years organising wildlife watching trips from Cromarty near Inverness she'd never seen anything like it.
Sarah, 40, said: "People were saying 'did you Photoshop that?' but I didn't and the rest of the tour were quite impressed. There were a few gasps when it happened.
"We saw the chase from the boat while out on a tour and he caught it. You see them grab it and spit it forward before finally eating it.
"Dolphins can be a bit like a cat with a mouse - they like to play with their food, you can see he was quite proud of that fish.
"There are never any guarantees in this business and we genuinely never know when we leave the harbour each morning what the day will bring.
"Some days we must be content with a distant glimpse of a fin, or simply the knowledge that the dolphins are wild and free to roam as they please."
The dolphin was snapped on a trip on Thursday last week.
See also: 10 things to see and do in Scotland
Sarah insists that although dolphins are under threat in many parts of the world the lack of study of the populations in UK waters means the state of the population is not as well known as it could be.
Sarah said: "There's a resident colony here in the Moray Firth, so we run trips to see them in the summer.
"Everyone round here is familiar with the colonies in Moray Firth and down off the coast of Wales in Cardigan Bay. Off the east coast of Scotland the population is about 200 and most of that is concentrated near here.
"The latest estimates by Aberdeen University is that the population is stable or increasing slightly. They've only been studied for around 25 years so they've always been here but only relatively recently have people started to learn about them."
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