Leighton Moss

A nice day's birdwatching, but no rarities

28th February 2013

 

Leighton Moss is an RSPB reserve famous for marsh harriers, bitterns, bearded tits and otters. I didn’t see any of them on the 28th of February, but the light was good and I had a productive day.

I always start my visits at the Morecambe Bay hides, which are little way from the main reserve, because they have the best light early in the morning. Unfortunately there weren’t many birds on the pools. I did get nice views of a charm of goldfinches feeding in alders beside the path and of a crow posed in a hawthorn tree. I tried to photograph both: the dappled light in the alders didn’t work, but the crow was down sun and I liked the colours of the lichens and twisted twiggy branches.

Crows don’t attract much attention from birdwatchers and they often get a bad press, but I admire their agility in flight, their adaptability and their intelligence.

The main part of the reserve is the largest reedbed in northern England. There is a public footpath on a causeway across the reeds and the Public hide looks north from the middle of causeway, but there was little in view when I looked in. At the end of the causeway there is a path for RSPB members leading north to the Lower hide. This path runs along the edge of the reserve, between a strip of woodland beside the reeds and rough pastures. A pair of song thrushes was searching the grassland. I had to wait for them to come close to the fence, and to choose poses where tufts of grass didn’t spoil the view and the angle of the light did not create awkward shadows (although I did a little dodging in Photoshop on the second image below). I couldn’t do anything about the way that the thrushes’ activities caused damp bits of grass to stick to their heads and beaks.

At the Lower hide, the most prominent birds were some teal resting at the edge of the water just in front of the hide. Most of them swam off eventually, but a few started dabbling in the marshy ground. One drake came very close to the hide, so I got a few shots – focus was tricky and the colours on the drake’s head changed with every movement, but I like this one.

Snipe are tricky birds to photograph. They live among clumps of sedge and grass, which always seem to be in the way; they can freeze, immediately becoming almost invisible and when they do move, they can be jerky and unpredictable making panning and focus difficult. There were about eight feeding close to Lilian’s hide when I arrived there after lunch, but I got rather frustrated by them. Fortunately one of them decided to be even less predictable by going for a swim, which I had never seen before. In retrospect, I wish I had set a slightly faster shutter speed, but I was pleased to get an adequate shot.

On the path through the woods towards the Griesdale hide I spotted a brambling in company with a few chaffinches. I knew I couldn’t get a proper photograph in the thicket, but I wanted a record shot. There has been some discussion on The Online Photographer blog* about record shots. For me a record shot is a shot taken simply as a record of something I have seen. Sometimes it’s the first step to a better photo, if you can wait or move or find another way to improve on it, but sometimes you just have to be satisfied with a record. Just to illustrate what I mean, here is one of these shots of the brambling – it has just been cropped to the same proportions and reduced to the same size as the others and converted to jpg format without any other processing. 

This photo wins no points for technical merit or artistic impression; but it clearly records a brambling.

The day ended in frustration, as I spent a long time watching a group of red deer stags in the distance from the Tim Jackson hide. Most had shed their antlers, but the biggest stag still had a fine set, however he sat in the reeds and only stood up when he was behind two others. I got no decent photos of them.

* Highly Recommended
a thoughtful blog about the artistic side of photography http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com