Wow it's been a while

Well I didn't get round to writing a post in February so here's one for March. As you probably can tell from my more recent post I am getting closer to my GCSE's and my life is being taken over by them. Photography is what's taking away my weekends, unfortunately or fortunately this is what's stopping most of my twitching and birding and replacing it with taking pictures of mallards. Not the most interesting of subjects.

As I hope you can see my project is on movement. I began the project with these Mallards in St Albans, the movement is conveyed quite simply through a long shutter speed and throwing seed in for the ducks. After developing a technique such as this I went on to develop it using the same technique, but changing the subject or idea. I did both and moved on to two fighting Moorhen.

Once again in this picture I wanted to emphasis the chaos and action. Perhaps freezing the shot slightly more would have achieved a better result. Well then now that I had finished this section of the project it was time to move onto another sub-theme still keeping the idea of movement. What better to do than WATER. This is when timing was crucial, luckily I was heading down to Cornwall were there is plenty of water at the moment and proved a perfect opportunity to photograph the idealistic streams which run through Cornwall's countryside.

Well that's about where I'm up to now in the project, which has taken me a surprisingly long 4-6 weeks. But now back to the birding, on the way down to Cornwall and on the way back I took some stops. Firstly for the Red-flanked Bluetail which unfortunately me and 5 others dipped and secondly to the long staying Lesser Scaup in Bodmin Moor.

Lesser Scaup (furthest to the left)

Well then we are reaching the end of my post, I hope you enjoyed reading it if you did and I would like to leave you with some of my entries to the Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition.

And that's about it.

Grey Phalarope (Hove)

Before the 11th exams had temporarily taken hold of all my free time and before that revision had, so eventually I managed to escape and for the first time in a long time get a lift with my parents to a twitch. I must admit this was no ordinary twitch instead of waking up at the ungodly hours of 4:30 I could sleep in until 7:30. Furthermore, it was less of a twitch than a photography opportunity. When I did get up though we were off with the crack of a whip. The traffic was good and we were in Brighton after an hour and a half. My mum and dad weren't sure were the bird was and when I told them it was at a children's paddling pool there even less sure expecting I had got something wrong. I did eventually get to the Grey Phalarope and I was overjoyed to see it hadn't decided to migrate on. Like everyone else I got down onto the floor and started photographing.

Grey Phalarope

The next four hours went past in a blur and before I knew it my dad was back ready to carry on. I took the opportunity and thought that the Glaucous Gull would be my best shot. After instantly dipping on that I had something to eat and was on my way back to the Phalarope. This time I was hoping to capture the bird in the evening light.

Grey Phalarope

By the end of the day I had probably explained to a thousand locals about every single feature of the bird to the response "aaaawwwwwwhhh poor birdy" and one person who was outraged that we were "photographing the children". All in all the bird peformed amazingly and I was happy to see it as well as photograph it.

murmurations

Winter is coming and the weather is getting colder an whilst we seek the warmth of a fire, birds seek each other. Through this we have dramatic winter roosts of raptors of of Starlings. I only found out recently (a few weeks ago) that there is a Starling roost at Startop's End Reservoir in Tring. I came upon it completely by accident after a photography trip to Tring. I was just photographing a swan in the evening light when suddenly a small flock of Starling flew over my head and began to circle the reed bed. Over time the flock increased in number until it was at least a few thousand strong. By the end they were covering the sky. I watched until they plunged into the reed bed leaving the sky completely empty. Since than I have been going every weekend and this week was the first time I managed to take any pictures with my DSLR rather than my SLR. It's hard to capture the true spectacle of a starling murmuration on camera, so these pictures are mostly experiments. The flock was nothing like the breathtaking murmurations you experience in somerset but it was still a spectacular view. Enjoy the pictures.

Thanks for reading.
Ephraim

What's going on?

If any of you are regular blog readers than you will know that I haven't written a post in quite a while. This is mostly due to not very much interesting birding activity going on. In the last few weeks I have mostly been focusing on my GCSE photography project. But I have been taking a lot of trips to Tring and other interesting places. In hope of getting some pictures but so far nothing out of the ordinary.
Apart from the Tufted Ducks all the pictures were taken on the Isle of Sheppey were I visited in the half term for a few days with my parents. Brief summary: Possible Red-rumped Swallow and possible Yellow-browed Warbler.

Brent Goose

Oystercatcher

Lapwing

Stonechat

Golden Plover

Tufted Duck

Tufted Duck

Swift, Swift, Swift

What a days birding, Norfolk never lets you down. Yesterday I set out again with Chris, Brendan and Paul to go birding. My spirits were high after last weeks success seeing a SEMIPALMATED PLOVER. We set of at the ungodly hour of 5:50 and arrived in Norfolk around 9 o'clock ready to start birding. We began at Cromer to see if we could connect with the Pallid Swift which had been there the day before, but news of a possible Blyth's Pipit set us running to Clye were we found out it was actually a Richard's Pipit and it hadn't been seen in a while. After giving a look around we only found some Brent Geese, Golden Plover and flocks of both Pintail and Wigeon. We than did a quick sea watch to pass the time whilst waiting for the Richard's Pipit to be relocated the highlights of which were Red-throated Diver and Common Scoter. When the rain started we gave up and headed back towards Cromer to Trimingham where the Swift had been relocated. We arrived at the layby just to be told that the bird was somewhere else further down the road so we immediately headed over there and quickly after arriving we were on the SWIFT sp.. The light was terrible and all I could make out was that it was a swift but some other people seemed confident that it was the Pallid Swift. When the bird left so did we and on to the Lapland Buntings just a few minutes down the coast. On the way I kept my eye on the sky and it payed off, half way to the Buntings suddenly a SWIFT sp. flew next to the car and over the buildings, it's the end of October so Swifts are just as likely to be Pallid as Common. I shouted out "Swift, Swift, Swift. Over the car, over the car, OVER THE CAR" Chris did an emergency break and we got out as the car was moving just to see the swift, it flew over us for a few seconds and than flew on. After a minute it came back round and than left not to return. I am still unsure if it was a Common or a Pallid but it was very near where we later saw the Pallid for definite. Soon we were back in the car and back on our way to the Buntings, we parked about 20 minutes walk away from the Buntings and quickly set off. I spotted a Clouded Yellow on the way and when we got onto the scene we were the only ones there. A Snow Bunting was he first bird we saw but Chris and Paul also found a Lapland Bunting.

Snow Bunting

It hide very well in the crops but showed up to about 6-8 feet from us! The bird must have been injured. After this success we headed back to the Trimingham and stopped at the layby were I instantly spotted the Swift flying low over the hedges. We watched it for a good hour and by the end we were certain it was a Pallid Swift.

Pallid Swift

We than finished the day with Stubb Mills were we saw Hen Harrier, Marsh Harrier, Great White Egret, Red-legged Partridge, Merlin and Common Crane.