High Tide at Dawlish Warren

OYSTERCATCHERS , WIGEON AND AN OWN GOAL

16th October 2013

There is a hide at Dawlish Warren National Nature reserve which looks out over the Exe estuary, it is next to the shallow bay, known as the Bight, behind the sand dunes of Warren Point. At high tide, the Bight is completely flooded and waders gather to roost at  both its ends. The southern end is right in front of the hide.
I took an afternoon off from my housekeeping and family duties on the afternoon of Wednesday 16th, which was a beautiful day. I was in the hide with my kit ready in good time before high tide. There were plenty of oystercatchers mustering in the area as the tide rose and I got some nice shots as they came closer, using my 500mm lens with my 1.4x converter.

But then I made a big mistake. The oystercatchers were moving to the right hand (western) end of the hide, so I moved along and tried to open another window to get the light at a better angle. Unfortunately I was not careful enough and the birds were too close, so they flew off.
I was mortified. Disturbing birds at a roost is very bad practice. Fortunately the other roost was undisturbed so the birds got a rest. It was also lucky that there were no other birders around, or I would have spoiled their afternoon too. I have learned to be much more careful in the future and I will open windows in anticipation well before the birds arrive.


The only birds that came close to the hide were a small party of wigeon. This drake was in beautiful plumage and showed well in the light.

Lyme Bay day

LOOKING FOR DOLPHINS AND SEA BIRDS

8th October 2013

Earlier this summer I asked to be put on Naturetrek's mailing list for day trips in Lyme Bay: it's been too long since I had a boat trip and I wanted to see the white-beaked dolphins which are the star attraction of this area of the English Channel. I had quite given up hope, when I received an e-mail announcing that the weather conditions were now favourable and two trips had been arranged. I booked on the second trip on October 8th.
After an early start I arrived on time at West Bay (near Bridport) and was given two pieces of news. The good news was that the first trip on the 6th had not seen any white-cheeked dolphins but they had seen a minke whale and a pod of common dolphins. The bad news was that the boat had developed engine trouble doing a survey on the 7th, but they had found a substitute vessel. That wasn't a problem as we set off, but by the end of the day I was suffering from the noise of the engine and the hardness of the wooden seats.
The weather forecast was not awfully good; but the light was nice for most of the day and the wind wasn't particularly strong, but there was a swell which got stronger as we went further out, not surprising as we were heading into a south-wester blowing straight up the English Channel.

We did eventually see a small pod of white-beaked dolphins, but they only came near the boat very briefly. Unfortunately at this point the wind had got up and the sea was quite active. I managed one shot of a dorsal fin, which was almost in focus. One of the dolphins did breach nicely, but I was on the other side of the boat, so I only saw a dark shape behind the row of passengers.
However the sea birds did us proud. I was hoping to see storm petrels, which we did, without getting brilliant views. I got my tick. There were lots of gulls of course including kittiwakes, plus gannets of all ages, fulmars, a few razorbills and good numbers of guillemots. This was the biggest group of guillemots that we saw.

My favourite 500mm Nikkor lens was not an option for this trip: it's just too big and clumsy. It would be so hard to control that I'd probably belt someone on the ear with it - not good for an ear or an expensive lens. I used my old 300mm f/4 Nikkor in a waterproof cover, which is much easier to handle but does not have the same sharpness or contrast. Unfortunately I couldn't get quite enough depth of field to make the shot above really good - but it shows how different guillemots look at sea from our usual views as they crowd together to nest.
The real spectacle came when we saw large numbers of birds which had found a lot of dead sprats. These were probably discarded by a fishing boat which had caught them, but did not have a quota to land them - a dreadful waste from the fishermens' point of view and carnage for the fish, but a feast for the birds.
It was just not possible to pick out and identify all the birds. One of the experts spotted a Balearic shearwater - a really rare bird which is a speciality of the area, but every time I got my binoculars on something which might have been a shearwater, it turned into a dark-plumaged young gannet.
But no-one could miss the skuas. We spotted an Arctic skua, which I consider the best flier among British birds, and it certainly disappeared at very high speed. far more numerous but just as menacing were the great skuas (or bonxies if you prefer). Another lifer for me. I had expected they would be a little larger, but they really look powerful and muscular. Actually there were so many fish floating on the surface that they didn't need to use their bully-boy tactics, but they still looked dangerous.

I was quite pleased with these images, although they are quite heavily cropped and I had to discard a lot of shots which were not in focus or shaken as the boat pitched. But I'd love to have another try; next year perhaps.

Muted Colours

ONE OF MY HOBBYHORSES

I won’t write much about my activities last month. I was very busy with family celebrations, and alterations to the new flat (involving multiple trips to the tip, more to buy new stuff and hours of painting). The only things that have kept me approximately sane are my family and the repeats of ‘Round the Horne’ on Radio 4 Extra.*

But I have done a little more reworking of some old images. One of my favourite websites is The Online Photographer (http://www.theonlinephotographer.com/), although it doesn’t include much nature photography, the regular writers have some great insights into photography and the comments of the readers are well worth reading too. Mike Johnston, the site's editor (and a very experienced writer about photography), is proposing to publish a book of photographs contributed by members. It is intended that this will be a high quality production based loosely on the theme of muted colours.

I like this idea, indeed it is a hobbyhorse of mine. I do not like oversaturated images – maybe I don’t have saturated eyes or maybe my brain is already saturated by silly ideas. I distrust garish colours, is someone trying to dazzle me? Have they got something to hide?
Of course a shot a kingfisher or a tropical butterfly has to have saturated colours for the subject, but a plainer background is important too. I think that subtle colours encourage the brain to study an image and so to search out the details and nuances that it contains. Of course this is important in nature photography, but also in portraiture, street photography, architectural photography and so on.

Anyway, one evening while the paint was drying, I went back to my old files to find some favourite subtle colour shots which I could contribute. The first was one in my first blog post, a black-necked grebe in winter plumage as the sun was burning through the mist at Dawlish Warren. The only saturated colour is the red of its eye.

The second is a bull grey seal hauled out on the sandbar at Donna Nook NNR, Lincolnshire, just before the 2009 breeding season: the sand and the wind seem to be alien environment for him, but he looks totally contented. I love the way that seals' whiskers curl when they dry out completely.

In the end, I didn’t submit my third choice, which was taken in 2005 with my first digital camera (a D70). It is a young great crested grebe on one of the lodges at Moses Gate country park near Bolton. The remarkable pattern of ripples is entirely natural. The photo was taken as a front came in from the west, so that the sky behind me was bright, but the sky behind the grebe and overhead was a mass of dark clouds, and there was enough breeze to produce a few ripples. I do like this image, but I wish that the grebe was a little closer and that I had crouched to get a lower viewpoint. Because it was taken some time ago, it has a lower pixel count than the others and the quality is a little lower.

I don’t expect that either of my images will be selected for the final publication. I am absolutely sure that many better photographers will have submitted better images. But I feel that they are images which get much of their strength from their muted colours. And I like them.

I have lined up something new for tomorrow, so if things work out my next post will be a little different.

  

^*Rambling Sid Rumpo lives!

Note added 9th October, Mike has received over 2100 photos from 941 photographers. The resulting book should be really special.