I was at Lake Victoria in Tanzania, Africa. A Kingfisher would fairly regularly perch itself high on a tree to keep an eye on the pond below. I climbed up the stairs to position my self at the same level as the Kingfisher, but the background did not work and I could not change my position, as I was confined to a balcony. What was I to do? How was I going to get any good images? I put the camera down and just started to observe the bird. Before long, I noticed a  predictable flight path. Every time it caught a fish, it flew in the same direction. The surveillance was beginning to pay off.

          I changed my location to closer to that flight path, moving until the background was going to be as good as it was going to get (which was not great). The surveillance continued to fine tune exactly where this little bird usually flew bye. I adjusted my location a bit and waited. The reward was well worth it:

From time to time we need to part with our beloved cameras to do some surveillance. Animals can be reasonably predictable. Once we can predict their behavior we can set out to use that knowledge to our advantage to capture nice pictures.