A Quickie at Slimbridge

 A bit of luck

Driving south through snowy England, I broke my journey at Slimbridge (much nicer than any of the motorway service areas). It was dull and grey, but the now made flat lighting more interesting. I only stopped for an hour or so, but it was well worth the effort. There wasn't much to see, indeed I have never seen fewer birds on Tack Piece in 39 years of irregular visiting, just a handful of sleepy Bewick's swans and a hungry looking buzzard.
The feeding station next to the Robbie Garnett hide had more activity, a couple of birders were photographing the tits and jackdaws on the feeders, but just after I arrived a water rail walked out of the reeds to join the moorhens in the shallow water around the feeders. I drew the nearer birder's attention to it as quietly as I could and then got out my camera with the 500mm lens and rested it on my beanbag. Fortunately the rail was reasonably co-operative and stayed around for at least 5 minutes, finding a couple of morsels worth eating. I had to use a very slow shutter speed at 200 ISO but I took 110 photos to give myself the best chance to make the most of the opportunity. Looking at the results, I was surprised to see how much the bird moved its head, even when its body was quite still. This shot was by far the best (1/60s at f/5).

I got a few more shots of Bewick's swans and pintails at the Rushy. But these are high key images which will need careful processing, so I won't rush to post them.
I then drove on through a heavy snowfall in Somerset. Conditions were so bad that a military Chinook helicopter (the big 2 rotor job) throbbed north up the motorway at about 50 feet as I was making a phone call at Taunton Dean services: I assume the pilot had to use the motorway to navigate in the white-out conditions.