A Halcyon Day

LEIGHTON MOSS – AVOCETS, HARRIER ACTION, A MAD LAPWING AND A MAGIC MOMENT

25th May 2013

May has been a busy month and I have had little time for photography. But I took my opportunity on Saturday as the weather forecast was good and I got out of bed early enough to reach Leighton Moss RSPB reserve before 8am.

I followed the strategy described in my previous blog about Leighton Moss. I start  at the Eric Morecambe hide because it gets the best light first. I managed some shots of avocets feeding. The viewpoint of the hide is rather high, but this enhances the view of the reflections.

The islands in the scrape had lots of nests. I think most of the black-headed gulls were on eggs and I spotted an incubating oystercatcher too. A few of the avocets had hatched their chicks, but they were still quite small and too far away for decent pictures. I tried shooting the gulls and avocets mobbing a young herring gull; I got one shot of a black-headed gull hovering just over the herring gull’s head, but it was facing in the wrong direction. 

At the main reserve I got good views of a marsh harrier male hunting over the reeds as I walked across the causeway. I was even luckier when I reached the Lower hide, as I saw the male bring in prey and one the females came off her nest. I had never seen a food pass before, but I managed to get a distant shot as the female came for her meal.This shot and the next one are quite heavily cropped.

I wish I could say that this was the first shot of a sequence, but I lost focus on the birds so the other shots were useless. Distant shots of the birds against a fairly high contrast background were too tough a test for the autofocus of my Nikon D300s.

The female harrier returned to her nest to feed, the male cruised around for a while, before perching. There are currently 2 males and 6 females nesting at Leighton Moss, so each male is hunting for four: of course they will be even busier when the chicks hatch as the females cannot hunt until the chicks are large enough to be left on their own. However the male couldn’t rest for long, he had to soar up to chase a buzzard away. The birds were too high to be easy to photograph, but the dogfight was quite dramatic. Both birds have similar wingspans, but the harrier was much lighter and more manoeuvrable than the powerful buzzard, so it keep high, threatening to strike down, and forcing the buzzard to roll or turn to strike upwards. Actually I don’t think they touched, but they certainly came close.

I ended my visit at the Grisedale hide. There was a mad male lapwing trying to impress a female with wild display flights and lots of ‘peewit’ calls.  Fortunately he had a predictable flight pattern; the slow section was just after take-off from a boggy patch, so I prefocussed in front of it and managed an action shot.

Another marsh harrier came over, I think it was a young male showing the first traces of grey plumage. I don’t think it was one of the breeding birds, but it was hunting and it made a kill in the reeds after I had taken a few shots.

Why was it a halcyon day?

I have left the best until last: halcyon is the Greek name for the kingfisher. At the Allen hide, I was hoping that an avocet chick south of the hide would come close enough to photograph, but I noticed a kingfisher at the other end of the scrape. I was not surprised because I have had glimpses around the scrapes before and the pools and channels on the other side of the railway line behind the hides look like possible kingfisher habitat too.
The avocet chick decided to have a rest, so I went to the other end of the hide to watch the kingfisher fishing off the blue plastic posts of the electric fence around the scrape (which was installed to protect the avocets). When it came nearer to the end of the hide, I took a few photos, rather distant but better than I had managed before, then the bird suddenly dived for a fish. Fortunately for me, it missed. Then it flew towards the hide, perching on the fence post nearest to my window. I pushed the focus button and held my breath. It seemed to take several minutes before the image popped into focus in my viewfinder, but what I saw was breathtaking. The kingfisher was gleaming because it was directly down sun from my camera position. I took 47 photos in 43 seconds. Many of them are almost identical, but this is one of the best: the blue plastic post is not the most photogenic of perches - but I was just delighted by this little male.

White plus Black and Grey

LITTLE EGRETS & JACKDAWS AT SLIMBRIDGE

1st May 2013

Rather later than intended, here are the photos I took at Slimbridge before Monty the crane appeared.

I had excellent views of little egrets hunting in front of the Martin Smith and Robbie Garnett hides. It was not so long ago that seeing a little egret in full breeding plumage would have sent any British birder into paroxysms of joy. It is too easy to become dismissive about these beautiful birds now that they have become so familiar. They are very elegant all the year round, but in spring their plumes or aigrettes add an extra dimension.

As I have written  before, water bird shots look good when there is a reflection to offer a double view of the subject and this also shows the quality of the water surface; the photo below demonstrates the energetic way that egrets shuffle their feet to disturb their prey, even when the water is deeper than their ideal. With pure white birds, you get a marvellous bonus when ripples are reflected from their breasts.

The birds in front of the Robbie Garnett hide were so close that I couldn't include the main reflection - although of course I was using the 700mm combination. I think there are three different egrets in these photos, they don't seem to take much notice of each other when they are foraging. Watching through the viewfinder I thought the bird below was warning off another, but when I looked around there was no other bird nearby.

You certainly don't have to watch a hungry egret for too long before you see it make a catch; they are remarkably efficient hunters of small fishes. These birds were catching sticklebacks. You can see the stickleback's spines in the photo below, but they didn't save the fish from the egret.

The traditional problem with shooting white birds in bright sunlight is overexposure, resulting in loosing highlight detail ('blowing the highlights' in photographic jargon). The conditions for these shots were a stiff test, but I think I have avoided this problem: I always set my D300s to underexpose by 2/3 stop compared to the factory setting, which usually avoids the problem, particularly as I always try to use the minimum ISO setting (200) - but a couple of test shots and a histogram check are still advisable. I also shoot 14-bit NEF (Nikon Raw) images, so that I have a little extra safety margin available when I am processing a 12-bit image. I use Capture NX2 because it is matched to NEF images and I like to set white and black control points on my images to get a full tonal range.

I'm quite sure that jackdaws recognise that inside the boundaries of Slimbridge, people are no threat, so they are very relaxed when close to the hides. Jackdaws are favourites of mine: adaptable, agile, intelligent, sociable and wonderful fliers. This bird was having a rest after raiding the feeders opposite the Robbie Garnett hide, I think (s)he felt that the seed mix was too good for the goldfinches and great tits.

This bird was hunting insects in the grass right in front of the Martin Smith hide.The problem with these photos is that there is no true white point in them (even the highlight in the eye of the bird below is distinctly blue). I find it much harder to process these shots by setting a black point and finding a true neutral grey point and adjusting its brightness.

Monty’s Birthday Bath

A CRANE AT SLIMBRIDGE

1st May 2013

I have been itching to get to Slimbridge since I learned that a pair of the cranes released by the Great Crane Project had returned to Slimbridge and built a nest on Tack Piece, right in front of the Martin Smith Hide. I finally had my chance on May Day.

When I reached the hide, a little before 11am, it became clear that the birds had not gone through with their attempt. This was hardly surprising because they are still very young. I caught a glimpse of the pair in the far corner of the field, but by the time I reached the Holden Tower, the birds had flown.

I had seen a group of 5 cranes in the distance on my previous visit to Slimbridge in February, so I was disappointed not to get a better view. Anyway I had a walk around the grounds, without taking any photos until I returned to Tack Piece and managed to get some shots of little egrets and jackdaws (which will appear here soon, of course).

I decided to make a final visit to the Martin Smith Hide just before 2pm. Shortly after I sat down, a WWT volunteer entered the hide and pointed out that one of the cranes was close to the boundary fence (I admit I hadn’t spotted it, Tack Piece is a large field). He said he was going to give a talk about the cranes outside the hide in a few minutes. Luckily I was sitting close to the door, so I could hear his talk but also keep my eyes on the crane which was coming closer.

Actually I already knew quite a bit about the Great Crane Project, which is trying to reintroduce cranes to south west England. They have imported 20 crane eggs from Germany each year since 2010. The chicks are reared at Slimbridge, using techniques developed at the International Crane Foundation at Barraboo, Wisconsin to help them to survive in the wild. Then they are released in the Somerset Levels. A few of the older birds have returned to Slimbridge for visits in the past year, although it is at least 40 miles north of their intended home.

I knew that the cranes which tried to nest were Monty and Chris, who were in the group I saw previously. As the crane approached the hide, I thought it looked tall enough to be a male, so I guessed it might be Monty. I was amazed that it came straight back to the nest, now occupied by a broody coot, so I took care to get some shots showing the colour rings on its legs.

A quick visit to the GCP website (http://www.thegreatcraneproject.org.uk/) in the evening confirmed that this bird is Monty. I also learned that he had hatched on 1st May 2010, so it was his third birthday! He celebrated by having a nice bath in front of the hide, so I had an amazing opportunity for photographs – luckily my 500mm and TC1.4 combination was long enough for decent framing – these cranes are wild birds that have been trained to avoid humans, if Monty had come any closer to the hide he would probably have been scared off.

When the volunteer finished talking, I felt that I ought to spread the word, so I stuck my head out of the door and said ‘one of the cranes is having a bath straight in front of the hide’ and the other visitors were able to see Monty for themselves.

I see from the GCP website that the first batch of 2013 eggs arrived at Slimbridge on May Day. They plan to bring in more eggs next year, and it is hoped that Monty and Chris and their contemporaries will nest successfully by 2015.

NEWS  20th May

WWT have announced that Monty and Chris are incubating at least one egg in a new nest in the Rushy Pen, just over the fence fromTack Piece.

UPDATE 4th June 

WWT announced yesterday that a crane chick hatched successfully, but disappeared within a couple of days. It either fell victim to a predator or to a spell of bad weather. Disappointing news, but hardly unexpected for such young parents.