Saturday 27 November 2010

Starlings - Friday 26th. Nov. / Saturday 27th.

I have been looking out for starling roosts for some time. Last week we went down to Plumstone Mountain near Haverfordwest to look at the one there. Unfortunatley from where we looked - the top of the 'mountain' the starlings were coming in low over the land and going straight down to the trees where they were roosting. No chance of 'patterns' in the sky.

In Teifi Marshes John Thomas showed me some video he had taken on Tuesday morning - a large roost of starling in the reeds. The weather during the week was not great so it took until Friday for me to get out and look for the starlings. John had told me that the roost was in the reeds between the dipping pond and kingfisher hide. When we got there about 4pm we could hear the starlings but they seemed to be collecting in front of the kingfisher hide. No great patterns in the sky - where are the raptors when you want them? This is the best I got at that time:

My Canon 50D with mini xoom 17-85mm at 17mm - ISO100 f4 @ 1/25sec.
It was beginning to look like the roost was in front of the kingfisher hide so we went down there and all the trees around the pond were covered with starlings:


Same zoom lens this time at 85mm - ISO100 f5.6 @ 1sec. Did not use tripod, just resting on the shelf in the hide so there is some camera shake.

All of a sudden all the birds took off and made for the reeds to roost. Decided to come back in the morning to see them take off. So this is them taking off about 7.45am. Just a straight shot - I would like to play about with shutter speeds etc to get more movement, but the battery packed up so I was pushed to take any shots:

Same camera and mini zoom at 17mm, ISO1000 f5.6 @ 1/60sec.

Monday 15 November 2010

Snow Buntings (Ynyslas) taken on Monday 15th. November

After some information from Wendy, Jen and I decided to go up to Ynyslas as there was a report on the Ceredigion Bird blog about some Snow Bunting in a car park there. At first we did not see any birds, but about ten minutes after we arrived another car came in to the car park and the driver started throwing seeds down on the ground. We went over to him and set up the camera - there were 3 snow bunting eating away - 2 male and 1 female. Here are two of the photographs I took:

This is one of the two males, taken with my Canon 500mm lens, 1.4 converter, ISO1000 f8 @ 1/3,200sec.

This is the female - taken with exactly the same kit and settings except that the exposure was 1/4,000sec.

Wednesday 3 November 2010

Otters on the Teifi taken on Wednesday 3rd. November

Yesterday (Tuesday) while volunteering at Teifi Marshes I saw a male otter and then a female otter with two cubs. Naturally at the time I did not have my camera with me. Today I went again - with camera - and managed the following:




Very poor lighting conditions! Both photographs taken with Canon 500mm lens with 1.4 converter, ISO1000 f5.6 @ 1/1000sec. - both about a stop under-exposed.