Having a day off and with reasonable weather forecast, Rose and I ventured down to Upton Country Park, where we knew there was a chance of photographing Jays. The Jay has been one of the birds we've long wanted to get more images of, but we knew the park had to be quiet to have a good chance.
We saw quite a number and set out to get them, but it wasn't easy. The forecast sunny periods were very few and far between and the appearance of a Jay naturally didn't coincide with them. This turned out to be my best effort and from quite a distance. But it was a good test for the new Canon 100 - 400 Mk ii zoom straight out of the box.
We've been a little quiet on the blog for a while, but that's not to say we haven't been busy. We've taken a number of trips to Radipole Lake, but have always come away fairly disappointed. Either there wasn't much about or conditions were largely against us. That little bit of luck was always missing too.
Today we decided to go down and have a look for the Water Rails that our friend Danny had found yesterday. To our surprise, they were showing very well, but not as well as the Bearded Tits. We have found the beardies on previous visits, but they have been quite flighty and hard to get at. Today was slightly different in that they stayed in one location for long periods,but it was breezy and trying to get focus through the reeds was as difficult as ever.
I was pleased to get this one and also the one on my Flickr page. Rose also got some excellent images and they are starting to appear on her own Flickr page. The Water Rails? Well we did get some shots, mostly bum shots in truth, but it was just good to be seeing them as they are usually very elusive.
We decided to venture over to the Somerset Levels yesterday for our first visit in over a year just to see what we could find. Starting at RSPB Greylake, we have never seen so many wildfowl in one place, but they were all asleep. However we did get one or two pleasing shots.
Next we tried Shapwick Heath, but never raised a camera to our eyes, so across the road to RSPB Ham Wall we went. This was looking to be much the same, apart from a friendly Robin that seemed to be following us wherever we went. But just when we thought we were going to have an unproductive day, an obliging pair of Reed Buntings put on a show for us in front of one of the hides, albeit at some distance. That was the theme for the rest of the day, typified by this Cormorant drying off after fishing trip.
