Category Archives: Photography

A very welcome return

Posted on May 1, 2023 | 2 comments

When I was a kid and we holidayed every year in Denmark, the stork was an iconic bird and one we never saw in the UK, and we would take trips down to Ribe in southern Jylland – the Danish mainland – to see storks nesting on church towers, thatched rooves and wagon wheels the locals had mounted on tall poles for that purpose.

In recent years a successful reintroduction program undertaken on the Knepp estate in Sussex with birds from Warsaw zoo has resulted in storks breeding again in England. The last recorded breeding in the UK happened in 1416 so it’s been a very long time coming!

Yesterday I went for a walk around Burwell Fen and Wicken Fen and the spring weather was perfect for nature watching; and birds, butteflies and mammals were out in abundance. But the star of the show was a stork sitting atop the Tower Hide at Wicken Fen. I’d been tipped off by another person enjoying a walk in the spring sunshine that it was there, but I was a tad sceptical until I rounded the bend and there it was. The first time I’d seen one outside Denmark or central Europe. Suffice to say I was beside myself.

White stork – Ciconia ciconia – perched on the Tower Hide at Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire

The stork is a migrant to Europe after overwintering in Africa and is up to 1.1m tall with a wingspan of around 1.8m. It’s a big bird and nests in small colonies on spectacular nests made out of sticks and I hope they start building them in Cambridgeshire again in the not too distant future.

I’d deliberately left my camera in the car to just enjoy the scenery and of course I half regretted that, so I took these images with my phone. Not the best quality photo’s of a stork but I’m very pleased with them and they record a very special sighting for me.

After taking flight from the hide it soared higher and higher over the Fen for probably 10-15 minutes or so before disappearing.

Apart from the stork, the Fens were alive with othe creatures and even though I don’t like lists this time it’s worth sharing a selection of what I saw and heard:

Hare, roe deer, orange tip butterflies, peacock (butterflies), speckled wood, brimstone, oystercatcher, lapwing, shelduck, swift (the first I’ve seen – and heard – this year), swallow, kestrel, sparrowhawk, marsh harrier, hobby, peregrine falcon, buzzard, cetti’s warbler, sedge warbler, grasshopper warbler – and all of these whilst being constantly serenaded by wrens and cuckoos.

If only I’d taken my camera 🙂

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Posted in fen, Migrants, Phone photography, UK wildlife, Wicken Fen

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The amazing potential of phone photography

Posted on October 10, 2016 | 16 comments

A few weeks ago, in August, I was in Toronto and on a glorious sunny day I took a boat trip out to Centre Island, which, in the unlikely event you ever find yourself in Toronto wondering what to do, I can heartily recommend. There were many huge and colourful butterflies including monarchs and swallowtails fluttering around the island, and some others I didn’t recognise. It was a work trip so I hadn’t taken my DSLR with me and the only way to get a photograph was with my phone camera. And then I discovered that monarchs are skittish and it’s not easy to get close to them, which I needed to do as I only had a phone to take pictures with, but after chasing several and failing to get within range I managed to sneak up on this one:

monarch-toronto-aug-2016-ppMonarch butterfly – Danaus plexippus

I stooped down on the opposite side of the plant to the butterfly and reached around to point my phone and take this picture. I must confess, I was a little gobsmacked at how well it worked. The light conditions were challenging as it was late morning and the sunlight was intense, so there was lots of contrast between the shade and the light. But after minimal post processing to darken the sunny bits I think is a pretty good image! I changed my phone earlier this year for an iPhone 6S plus and I was impressed with the quality of the camera from the start, but after this shot I’m really impressed with it.

I hope it’s not a global phenomenon, but this year, due to climatic aberrations, many butterfly species have been hit really hard and their numbers have plummeted. The results of the ‘Big Butterfly Count‘, an annual survey of our Lepidoptera here in the UK, was reported today, and the news was bleak. Many erstwhile common species have really suffered and this is a phenomenon which I’ve noticed and commented on several times since the Spring this year. And now it’s official. Sir David Attenborough (the worlds greatest living human being), and president of the charity Butterfly Conservation, said that butterflies are a good barometer of the state of nature in general. I’m inclined to agree with him and I think it’s a very bad sign that the plight of our butterflies in the UK is so dire. It doesn’t augur well.

small-copper-wandlebury-roman-road-sep2016-ppSmall copper – Lycaena phlaeas

But one of my absolute favourite butterflies, and one that I only see very infrequently, even in a good year, is the small copper. I think they’re gorgeous. I haven’t seen one for about three years and then, randomly, a friend of mine showed me this picture a couple of weeks ago which he took with his phone, also an iPhone 6S, on the Roman road between Cambridge and Linton.

So there are still some lovely butterflies out there, but please think of them and, if you can spare it, leave a little bit of your garden to grow wild with no chemicals to help them recover. And if you don’t have a camera handy to take a portrait give it a go with your phone instead, you might be surprised!

16 Comments

Posted in Butterflies, Climate change, Insects, Lepidoptera, Phone photography, Photography, UK wildlife, Wandlebury

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Ouse Fen

Posted on December 12, 2015 | 13 comments

First things first, a very happy new year to you all. I hope 2016 brings you peace and prosperity. Heading back into the depths of last year I spent a very cold morning at the end of November exploring Ouse Fen which is a great place for songbirds and water birds.

RSPB Ouse Fen is another collection of exhausted gravel  pits which have created a series of lakes and been turned into a nature reserve. It’s part of ongoing extraction so new habitat is being created all the time and will all eventually become nature reserve, creating an enormous network of varied habitat. It’s located between Needingworth and Bluntisham near St Ives in Cambridgeshire.

The entrance onto the reserve is via a pathway across a bleak field leading to a sheltered path that’s lined with established hedges, and the hedges are always full of songbirds. On this trip it was as busy as ever and within a few metres I spotted a goldcrest just a few feet away and within a few seconds there were four of them. In my experience goldcrest are devilish difficult to get good photographs of, because like wrens, they are tiny and they flit around at high speed in the undergrowth. But this time I ramped up the ISO to 1000 which allowed a reasonable shutter speed of 1/320 s and got lucky:

Goldcrest (Regulus regulus, Dansk: fuglekonge)

The Danish name translates as ‘bird king‘ I guess from his splendid golden crown, and it’s the smallest breeding bird in the UK, weighing in at 5-6g.

Despite its diminutive stature it’s conservation status is green and more than half a million territories were recorded in the UK in 2009. Hopefully it isn’t suffering too badly with climate change…

Another bird which was in good numbers on this trip was the bullfinch. When I was a kid it wasn’t too unusual to see bullfinch on the feeders in the garden. But after the 1970’s their numbers plummeted such that it was years before I saw one at all. But nowadays I see them fairly frequently in the countryside (never in the garden though) and they had 190,000 territories in 2009 in the UK, so they can’t be doing too badly and their conservation status is amber.

The female is striking but has fairly drab colours in the winter:

Bullfinch female (Pyrrhula pyrrhula, Dansk: dompap)

And the male is splendid even in winter with his peachy orange breast, black cap, grey back and white rump:

The bullfinch is a chunky finch with a beak to match which they use for cracking the seeds or stones from small fruit like cherries. They also eat shoots and consequently part of the reason for their downfall in the 1980’s was a result of falling foul of the fruit farmers. I love to see them and because of the relative scarcity of sightings and their skittish nature I’ve been waiting a long time to get a half decent photograph of one. And on this occasion I managed to get pictures of the male and the female. So I felt particularly smug on the way home!

Goldfinches harvesting seeds from teasel heads (Carduelis carduelis, Dansk: stillits)

Ouse Fen is known for the prevalence of finches including redpoll, linnet and goldfinch all of which I’ve seen there before but this time it was only goldfinch that were on parade so I’ll try to get some redpoll and linnet pictures next time.

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Posted in Birds, Countryside walks, Finches, Ornithology, Photography, Songbirds, UK wildlife, Woodland

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Welcome house guests

Posted on December 16, 2014 | 11 comments

One day in the summer I noticed a crane fly sitting on the outside of a window so I grabbed my camera with the macro lens and went on a bug hunt round the house. And these are the beasties I found lurking:

Male house spider, Tegenaria gigantea, with a glint in his eye

It was a murky day so the pictures I took in the house required the flash, so I experimented with the flash power, the ISO, and used the smallest aperture I could to maximise the depth of field (DOF). The ones I took through the window didn’t require the flash, but I kept the ISO higher, again so I could maximise the DOF:

Crane fly or daddy longlegs, Tipula paludosa, revealing one of the more bizarre head designs in the animal kingdom

On the same window as the crane fly were a number of garden spiders (Araneus diadematus) including this male:

The same male garden spider wrapping up a hoverfly

The crane fly was playing a dangerous game running the gauntlet of the garden spiders but it managed to avoid getting eaten. The garden spider above was on the window for weeks and was rather larger at the end, demonstrating that ambush predation is a highly successful strategy when combined with a sophisticated web to ensnare the prey.

Female oak bush cricket, Meconema thalassinum

It’s not uncommon in the summer for oak bush crickets to appear in the house and there’s no mistaking this creature. the one here is a female which is immediately apparent from her long ovipositor protruding from the back end. They are common all over the south of England and are carnivorous, feeding on small insects, so they’re welcome in the house.

And another carnivore which I’m happy to provide accommodation for is the daddy long legs spider:

Daddy long legs spider, Pholcus phalangioides, with a few of her many offspring

The daddy long legs spider looks so delicate but is a voracious predator and will catch and eat the much chunkier house spider as well as its siblings!

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Posted in Arachnids, Crickets, Diptera - two winged flies, Insects, Photography

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Winter’s on the way

Posted on November 16, 2014 | 10 comments

I can tell when winter is on the way because the bird population in my garden changes to reflect the season. A coupe of weeks ago a flock of long tailed tits passed through, the first one this side of the summer, then this weekend the garden was so full of birds I had to refill the seed feeders.

The one species which, when I first see it, confirms the imminent descent into winter chiiliness is the coal tit (Periparus ater, Dansk: sortmejse):


Coal tits can be tricky to photograph because they don’t stay still in the open for very long at all. And on top of that, the weather last weekend was foul: cold, grey mist, murky and damp with very little natural light. So I wound up the ISO to 3200 in order to allow me to get a suitable shutter speed and crossed my fingers that it would work. And I was pleasantly surprised by some of the results:

The coal tits flit rapidly and cautiously onto the feeder, grab a seed and immediately make a beeline for the adjacent buddleia bush to shell it and consume the contents under cover. It’s a small bird, about the size of a blue tit, but it has a black head with a white stripe up the nape and is pale rufous brown underneath, so it’s immediately distinguishable from it’s more prevalent cousin.

It’s not unusual to see blue tits all year round but the coal tit feeds mainly on conifers, so as there are no conifers in or around my garden, it only ventures in when the harsher weather of the approaching winter necessitates it.

And of course, the blue tits were here too:

Blue tit  – Cyanistes caerulius, Dansk: blĂĄmejse

My resident dunnock was on parade, present and correct, I like the pose in this image and even in the shabby light conditions the colours stand out. I think the dunnock is the archetypal ‘LBJ’ or ‘little brown job’, but you can see here that it’s much more than that!

My resident dunnock – Prunella modularis, Dansk: jernspurv

The Danish name for the dunnock is ‘jernspurv‘ which tranlates as ‘iron sparrow‘ which I think is a very apt name.

The third member of the tit family that visited on Saturday was the great tit which is our largest. It’s probably the most frequent garden visitor too, at least in my garden, or maybe just the most visible one:

Great tit – Parus major, Dansk: musvit

This great tit is female, the black stripe on her underside is narrow and short compared to that of the male which is longer and stretches from one leg to the other at the bottom of the abdomen. I think the one below is a male but I didn’t get a good enough view of its nethers to be sure. He has what looks like a parasite on his face next to his eye and I wondered how that was affecting him. He seemed to be feeding and flying OK, but the next day he was back and he was wobbly in flight and actually flew into the wall of my shed, so it appears to be affecting his vision or balance, or both. So I reckon he could become a meal for the local sparrowhawk before too long. Nature is beautiful but brutal!

Whilst all the tit activity was going on on the feeders a wood pigeon alighted on the shed awaiting an opportinity to grab some seed from the tray feeder. Last week the hanging feeder was emptied in a couple of days, which is unheard of, and when I watched I saw the wood pigeon was standing on the tray feeder from where it emptied the hanging one in record time. One wood pigeon can hold a phenomenal amount of seed and it also means the small birds get less of a look in, so I rearranged the hanging one so the pigeon can  no longer reach it. (I also scatter nuts and seeds on the ground for the pigeons so they don’t starve).

Wood pigeon – Columba palumbus, Dansk: ringdue

And the last bird I managed to get a picture of was the ever present robin. I love this little chap, it’s always there raising Cain with the dunnocks and brightening up even the greyest day.

Robin – Erithacus rubecula, Dansk: rødhals

Chaffinch, blackbird and wren all put in appearances as well, but I didn’t manage to get pictures of them and I’m looking forward to seeing which other species pay me a visit over the cold winter months.

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Posted in Birds, Cambridgeshire, Garden birds, Photography

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Birds and bees…

Posted on May 11, 2014 | 19 comments

…and butterflies.

A male large white butterfly (Pieris brassicae, aka the ‘cabbage white’) zeroing in on a potential mate…

I normally try to avoid taking photographs of UK wildlife on imported garden plants, in this case buddleia, species of which grow endemically on several continents, and I believe our UK variety arrived here from the Himalayas.

No longer anything ‘potential’ about her!

But in this instance the drama was so compelling (and I was testing out my new macro zoom that I introduced in the last post) so I decided to share this sequence.

Several mating events ensued after which the male settled on a lower flowerhead to sip nectar and replenish his energy reserves:

The large white, along with the small white (Pieris rapae), are known as the ‘cabbage whites‘ because they lay their eggs on members of the cabbage family and the caterpillars can do a lot of damage to cultivated cabbages. But I’m quite happy to share my cabbage allowance with them and I love to see them fluttering through my garden and along the hedgerows.

19 Comments

Posted in Butterflies, Flora and fungi, Histon, Insects, Lepidoptera, Photography, UK wildlife

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Cheap and cheerful

Posted on May 7, 2014 | 27 comments

Last year when I changed my old Nikon D40x for a Nikon D7000 I also bought a cheap second hand Sigma macro lens to go with it. I wouldn’t normally do that, but because of the attractive price tag I thought I’d give it a go in order to dip my toe in the water of  macro photography without upsetting my bank manager. Or, more importantly, my wife!

When I first got the lens I mooched around the house looking for small things to photograph and I didn’t have to wait long before a selection of arthropods presented themselves.

Vespula vulgaris, I also like this image because of the clear double reflection in both panes of the double glazing.

The wasp was buzzing up and down the glass of a door trying to find a way out so I practised my macro technique on it before opening the door and providing it with an escape route.

Even though the head is not in sharp focus I also like this image because of the reflections in the window glass

In this image the plane of focus has captured the wings and the head is slightly out of focus, demonstrating the narrower depth of field (DOF) inherent with macro photography. Tech note: DOF decreases in range with magnification and aperture, so for a given aperture the DOF will decrease with increasing magnification. Or put another way, if you need to open the aperture wider (smaller F-stop number) to get enough light on the sensor to generate an image, you may need to sacrifice some magnification.)

And while I was busy with the wasp a house spider appeared by my feet so I had a shot at that too:

Young house spider, a species of Tegenaria. Despite the size and speed, their bite, if not their induced terror factor, is harmless to humans

This individual was only 2-3cm long indicating it’s a young one and from the shape of its abdomen it’s a male. The female is bigger and has a more bulbous abdomen.

And on an earlier occasion, whilst fulfilling my domestic obligations and doing the washing up, this splendid red eyed dipteran appeared on the teapot on the kitchen window sill and sunned itself for long enough for me to grab the camera and snatch a few close ups.


I don’t know what species the fly is but if anyone is able to enlighten me I’d be very grateful. And it added an enjoyable interlude to the washing up too!

The lens I bought was the Sigma 70-300mm APO DG 4-5.6 macro zoom which can switch to macro between focal length 200-300mm. It has pretty solid build quality, it’s reasonably small (although it gains approximately 5.5cm in length at 300mm zoom) and is a pretty good little lens for general purpose zooming too.  It’s noisy and slow when moving from far away to close in, and vice versa, but as you can see I’ve had some fun with the local insects, and although I need a lot of practise it holds the promise of lots more minibeast shots. All in all it was a good ninety quids worth, and I shan’t be rushing out to spend lots of cash on a better quality lens just yet because I don’t think I need one. I shall carry on having fun with this cheap and cheerful one.

 

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Posted in Arachnids, Diptera - two winged flies, Insects, Photography

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Minsmere raptors

Posted on August 22, 2013 | 14 comments

Whilst I was at RSPB Minsmere, which I described in my last post, I was expecting to see birds of prey because I know that marsh harriers (Circus aeruginosus, Dansk: rørhøg) nest in the reedbeds there and it wouldn’t be totally unexpected to see a hobby (Falco subbuteo, Dansk: lærkefalk) or a peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus, Dansk: vandrefalk).

Avocet were nesting on the mudflats along with plenty of other birds including the black headed gulls (Chroicocephalus ridibundus, Dansk: hættemåge):

Black headed gull in full summer plumage guarding its nest

I was engrossed peering into the distance with my new spotting scope, and I found a spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia, Dansk: skestork). The Danish name translates as ‘spoon stork‘ which just about sums it up really. I didn’t get a photograph because it was too far away, but it looks exactly like a white stork with a long beak shaped like a spoon. The conservation status of the spoonbill is amber and it is extremely rare in the UK and not terribly common on mainland Europe either. According to the British Trust for Ornithology there are 75 individuals in the UK and between 1998 and 2002 there were only 4 breeding pairs.

But I digress. As I was gazing into the disatnce the air raid warning was sounded: “There’s a peregrine… there are two!”

A peregrine falcon swooping down onto the nesting gulls

The falcons, I found out subsequently, were nesting on Sizewell B, the nuclear power station adjacent to the reserve. They arrived from that direction and when attacking they appeared to be working in tandem. The speed of their forays was absolutely breathtaking and caused total chaos on the ground:

The nesting gulls trying to distract the pair of peregrines

I tried to capture the falcons in the middle of their attack which was not easy, but I managed to catch one just above the left hand point of the mudflat behind. It wasn’t until I looked at the image at home that I realised the second falcon was in shot on the right too. So even though this photograph won’t win any awards I really like the drama going on here!

A common tern giving chase to deter the peregrine

The falcons raid lasted for several minutes and I didn’t see them catch any prey, thanks in no small part to the bravery of the common tern (Sterna hirundo, Dansk: fjordterne).

After the excitement of the falcons I ended up in a hide on the edge of the woods overlooking the reedbeds and sure enough the marsh harriers were much in evidence:

The female marsh harrier with her brown plumage and golden yellow crown

… and the male:

Whilst photographing the male marsh harrier a brown shape lifted out of the reeds and someone in the hide identified it as a bittern (Botaurus stellaris, Dansk: rørdrum). It was too fast for me to identify it by myself as I was focussed on the harrier, but that means I heard one booming at Lakenheath in the morning and saw one at Minsmere in the afternoon. Not a bad day out.

Juvenile marsh harrier with ragged brown plumage and no yellow crown

I didn’t see a hobby but it would be churlish to dwell on that after the excitement of the peregrines, the family of marsh harriers, and the bittern and spoonbill neither of which I’d previously encountered.

14 Comments

Posted in Birds, Birds of prey, Coastal walk, Falcons, Gulls, Hawks, Lakenheath Fen, Minsmere, Photography, Seabirds, Terns, UK wildlife, Waders

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Wicken wheatears.. and some other creatures

Posted on August 12, 2013 | 8 comments

The blogging Muse left me in the Spring and I switched to acquisition mode, since when I’ve been out and about taking a lot of photographs. I’ve now got enough images to keep me posting until the end of the year  so I’ve reverted to posting mode and at the same time I’ll be catching up with all my fellow bloggers who I’ve been neglecting for too long!

At the end of April the sunny weather prompted me to take an early morning walk around Wicken Fen. At that time of year fairly large areas of flat pasture immediately adjacent to the fen are flooded and provide habitat for overwintering waterfowl, along with all the other winter visitors and early spring migrants to be found on the Fen. So in good weather at that time of year there’s usually plenty of wildlife. The pasture which isn’t flooded is managed by grazing it with Highland cattle:

The Wicken Highland bull

I’m no expert on cattle so I don’t know for sure, but because this old guy was on his own and also because of the sheer size of him, I think that he’s a bull (and he didn’t stand up to allow unambiguous gender assignment by an amateur observer). He was absolutely enormous, even laying down I estimate the top of his head was around 5 feet off the ground, he was the size of a car!

Back to the birds though, one which I’ve only seen at reserves on the coast before is the bearded tit (Panurus biarmicus, Dansk: skægmejse), but on this particular morning there was at least two of them flitting around the reed beds between The Mere and Adventurers Fen.

Female bearded tit

I’m yet to get a really good photograph of a bearded tit and this one continues the tradition. It would have been OK but it is too blue because I didn’t have my glasses on when I set the white balance, so I mistook the ‘sun’ setting for the ‘incandescent light’ setting. Alas, an unavoidable consequence of hurtling into middle age! I tried to post process the image but alas I couldn’t get it to look quite right so I decided to leave it as it is and own up to my incompetence!

The bearded tit is a resident breeder and passage/winter visitor and there are only around 600 breeding pairs in the UK, so it’s good to know they are just up the road from where I live. Their conservation status is amber in the UK due to a recent decline in their breeding range but they are not a species of concern in Europe as a whole. They live and breed in reedbeds and feed on invertebrates in the summer and seed in winter.

Another iconic inhabitant of the Wicken reedbeds is the marsh harrier (Circus aeruginosus, Dansk: rørhøg). The colour of the sky reveals the weather on this glorious April morning as a male marsh harrier thermalled overhead. He was in the company of eight others, and that’s an amazing sight.

A marsh harrier gaining height as the earth warmed up in the early morning sunshine

The marsh harrier frequents reedbeds and marshland and feeds on frogs, insects, reptiles and small vertebrates. Its conservation status is amber in the UK due to its small non-breeding population and a localised breeding population, but as with the bearded tit its not a species of concern in Europe. It almost died out in the UK in the 1960’s but has recovered since then and has changed its behaviour by starting to also nest on farmland, and many individuals now overwinter here too. Those that migrate head down to central and southern Africa for the winter. Another recent raptor success story along with sparrowhawks and red kites, but still a work in porogress to secure the UK population.

Male reed bunting

Small songbirds such as the reed bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus, Dansk: rørspurv) were busy proclaiming their availability from the tops of the hedgerows, but the highlight of the trip was a small group of around half a dozen wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe, Dansk: stenpikker) feeding in a field adjacent to the Fen as I arrived:

Male wheatear – rear view

The name ‘wheatear’ may derive from the archaic ‘white arse’ which is a local name for it in some parts of England. It’s a migrant breeder in the UK and overwinters in Africa. After the last ice age its range extended northwards with the retreating ice, but they still all migrate back to Africa in the winter, even those individuals that breed in Alaska!

… and from the front

The female is also a striking bird even though she doesn’t have the same slate grey back and black eye stripe that the male does.

The female wheatear

I watched the wheatears for 20 minutes or so before heading on to the Fen and when I returned around 3 hours later they had all gone. So it appears it was an overnight rest and refuelling stop for them before heading further north and west to their summer breeding grounds.

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Posted in Birds, Birds of prey, Countryside walks, Hawks, Mammals, Migrants, Ornithology, Photography, Songbirds, UK wildlife, Wicken Fen

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New Year Ducks

Posted on January 2, 2013 | 38 comments

For the last 14 months or so I’ve been saving my spare pennies in order to upgrade my photographic hardware and the plan was to put the money towards the Canon 100-400mm telephoto zoom lens which I mentioned in my last post.

(I’ve bought several items in the last 7 or 8 months or so from an online second hand camera shop and I’m going to give these guys a free plug because they have been very good indeed. They are called ‘MPB Photographic‘ and are based in Brighton, UK. I got a cheap Canon 18-55mm lens, a Manfrotto tripod, several filters and the battery grip for my Canon DSLR. All were good prices and the quality has been excellent and exactly as described on the website, so I’ve saved between ÂŁ5-600 so far! Apparently, the pictures of items on the website are always of the item you are actually buying, not a new one, and the images are zoomable so you can get a good look at it too. So after buying my lens there and it being in mint condition I’ve decided that I’ll buy second hand if they have what I’m after).

The good lady wife gave me the lens for Christmas and I was very excited about getting out and about with it between Christmas and New Year, and then on Christmas Day I came down with the lurg and was incapacitated for a week. But on New Years Day I was feeling a little more human, and the sun came out, so I was determined to get to a lake and try to take photographs of distant water birds.

Tufted duck (Aythya fuligula) – the male of the species, with his reflection and his piercing yellow eye

I drove the short distance to Milton Country Park on the north side of Cambridge, which was full to overflowing with folk walking off their New Years Eve hangovers. I’ve been on a mission to get a good photograph of a tufted duck because they’re handsome birds and I’ve taken many sub standard pictures which simply don’t cut the mustard, so I was pleased to get these pictures in lighting conditions that were challenging. It was a very cold but sunny day and by the time I got there in the mid afternoon the sun was already behind the trees, so the light was starting to fail and I needed high ISO to get a picture. But despite that the quality of the images is pretty good I reckon!

The male tufties were grouped together, there were around half a dozen of them, and a way distant was a female, paddling around on her own and she seemed to be avoiding the males.

The female tufted duck and a black headed gull in winter plumage

The lady of the species is dark brown on top with mottled brown flanks and is rather less noticeable than the male. Bit I really like this picture of her because of the colour of the water. She was 60-70m beyond the group of males in the pictures above and I really liked the difference in the colour of the water due to the sun shining on the trees behind her and reflecting on the water, but where the males were the water was the colour of the reflected sky.

So I’m very satisfied with the performance of my new zoom lens and I’ll be posting lots more pictures to show you in the very near future.

(P.S. I’ve been really struggling to keep up with all your blogs and it’s been a source of major irritation, but I’m now going to try to catch up with you all over the next week or so. See you soon. F)

38 Comments

Posted in Birds, Ducks, Milton Country Park, Ornithology, Photography, UK wildlife, water birds

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