Photographs and Fishermen

Last weekend, I went to the British Birdfair at the Egleton nature reserve, Rutland Water. Normally the preserve of England's best known osprey population. Today the place was full of wildlife artists, wildlife holiday travel companies, bird NGO's and optics companies, all squeezed into a series of marquees. Imagine a giant county show for birders only without the farm animal displays and giant vegetables. This was the first time I had been to Birdfair which was established many years ago and has, among other things, raised an amazing amount of money for conservation projects around the world. Apart from listening to one talk, styled as an interview between the wonderful duo of Georgia Locock and Chris Packham (as passionate as ever about our beautiful but oh so threatened hen harriers), the key area for me turned out to be the optics tent as slightly to my own surprise, I came away with a new camera. It could have been worse, I was also sorely tempted by a limited edition print by one of my favourite artists, Chris Rose, a truly stunning depiction of sanderling on the tideline, a scene I have witnessed many times at places like Titchwell in Norfolk. In my defence, my current camera is literally heading south when my daughter takes the existing camera with her to university on the south coast so clearly I had to do something, yes?

So time to try out the new camera but where? In the 'how to' birdwatching books, they always say to start in your local park and in a simple bid to get used to the extra bells and whistles on the new machine, I strolled down to the lake that sits in the middle of Goldsworth Park, which isn't a park at all but the name of the housing estate on which I live. To be fair, it is a rather green estate with lots of trees (it is former nursery land) and that lake, complete with clumps of reed and a sadly unused kingfisher bank.

Moorhen 

The lake boasts modest numbers of fairly common species including moorhen, along with larger (or at least more obvious) numbers of coot. Whilst on my knees pointing the camera in the direction of this young moorhen, a couple of local fisherman, thinking I was one of them I suppose, kept shouting 'good morning' at me until they realised I wasn't (a fisherperson that is). I responded politely of course (amazing how many fishermen, joggers, dog walkers and birders there are around at 6.30 in the morning) but they certainly seemed disappointed when they understood I was carrying a camera not a rod (wouldn’t have said the lens was that long).

The centrepiece of the lakes wildlife is the pair of great crested grebe who have bred successfully here for a good few years. This picture of one of the two youngsters almost works as the water splash is perhaps more in focus than the birds. The adults, not quite at their finest now but still handsome birds, must by now be tired of being pestered for food buy two 'chicks' who are almost as well grown as they.

Great Crested Grebe 'splash'

Great Crested Grebe

Given I was sat at the bottom of a grassy bank whilst waiting for the grebes and the bird was at the top, I couldn't resist a low level shot of this woodpigeon (best not to think about what the red bin is behind the bird).

Woodpigeon

Black headed gulls are a feature of much of this country but still worth pointing the camera towards when the occasion arises (certainly while you are trying to figure out a new camera), so this forms a sort of gull study; standing, floating and flying. The flying shot perhaps isn't quite sharp; flying shots are hard whatever equipment you are using it seems.

Black Headed Gull 

Black Headed Gull

Black Headed Gull

 I finished by wandering off the park and onto some nearby common land. In one damper area, I found these mushroomy, fungi things. Now I clearly don't precisely know what they are (although there is a strong resemblance to the centrepiece of a recent field mushroom wellington recently enjoyed by me in a pub very close indeed to this site), but I did just like the view.

Autumn is essentially with us from a wildlife viewpoint and my next wander might see me further afield. Clearly, I need to test out the new camera as much as possible!

Buzzard Exposure

Sunday presented me with a dilemma, do I stay in and watch the England cricket team push for an unlikely victory in the 3^rd test match against Pakistan or do I wander out into the field complete with camera to see what I can find and enjoy the afternoon sunshine? With Pakistan a tantalising five wickets down, I nonetheless went out for a local walk, no car, just a couple of hours within a short distance from the house covering a bit of low grade heathland, some pine trees and some grassland. The habitat is a lot better than I have just made it sound and this is a favourite walk.

Most of what follows is all about buzzards, two of them to be precise making quite a racket in the skies above my head, busily shouting at each other as I tried to take photographs. These are pretty common around Surrey these days, a line I would never have thought to write a few years ago when they were a treat to be seen on family holidays to Devon. Now I am going to get a bit technical (at least by my standards) around exposure; stay with me it will be interesting (a bit).

One of the things I wanted to do was capture the rather splendid underwing pattern of the buzzard and to do that, I ended up playing with exposure levels. The photos that follow are unmolested by photoshop apart from a bit of judicious cropping. I will talk in term of 'stops', so over exposed by 1 stop or level, 2 stops etc. The first photo has no ‘stops’ so is if you like, ‘normally’ exposed. This is mostly because when the buzzards appeared, I instantly panicked about the possibility that they would fly away and just pointed the camera and started shooting! Nonetheless, I like the natural light and warm colours (as I see them) and the picture does show the power of a large(ish) raptor, quite likely my favourite group of birds.

Buzzard (normal)

Ok, so panic is receding a bit as the birds are showing no real signs of leaving me so this next shot is ‘over exposed’ by 1 stop. It’s a bit different because the buzzard is against a bit of cloud but begins to show up a more detail. Different buzzards have seemingly endlessly variable plumage, light phases and dark phases and middlin phases and this one is a typical buzzard; broad black trailing edges and primary tips to a fairly white outer underwing graduating to lovely barred secondaries.

Buzzard (1 stop)

Against all my expectations (I operate on the basis that good things don’t happen to me at times like this), the birds are still with me so now we go to 2 stops over exposed. All the features I have mentioned are showing nicely in this image but now the sky is looking on the pale side, certainly paler than I remember it ‘live’. Still, nice image in some ways illustrating the fact that this bird is calling, as both birds were constantly doing all the while I was with them.

Buzzard (2 stop)

Last shot, this one 3 stops over exposed and let’s be honest, positively bleached, both bird and sky, but still calling. I might play with this on on photoshop now.

Buzzard (3 stop)

I have nice things to say about the first three images and, at least in these conditions, I guess the ‘right’ exposure is perhaps the 1 stop, quite like the two stopper in many ways (this is beginning to sound like an F1 strategy). Putting all that to one side, this is a relatively common, but deeply impressive, almost regal bird; powerful, beautiful and if you qualify as food, distinctly dangerous.

Oh, England won the test match and of course I have it recorded so, best of both worlds!