Salon acceptances

I have had two images accepted for the 2013 Bristol Salon of Photography - in the Nature section.

'Little egret with fish'

And my 'Perched Kingfisher'

Garganey at Teifi Marshes

This male garganey was being very co-operative in front of the Kingfisher hide:

This male has now been joined by a female and was last seen on the square pond near the car park.

Ring Ouzel at Mwnt

Managed to catch up with one of the ring ouzels at last. This is my first view of this bird - well worth the hours waiting - in the cold! Taken with my Canon 7d 500mm lens with 1.4 TC ISO400 f5.6 @ 1/800sec.

Ceibwr and Gwbert

When we arrived at Ceibwr this bird was walking down the road towards us. I think it is a rock pipit:

Following on from the previous post re: Spring, caught sight of my first wheatears of the year in Ceibwr:

 



Taken with my 500 lens with 1.4TC ISO1000 f5.6 @ 1/5000sec.

Down in Gwbert we found the following:

Oystercatchers:

 

The grey plover that's been hanging around the estuary all winter:

 

and some sanderlings:

Spring is here

While parts of Wales have snow on the ground there are signs of spring at the Teifi Marshes Reserve. One or two sand martins have been seen since about the 8th. March but today is the first day I have seen several sand martins at the Kingfisher Hide. In addition there was a sizeable movement of chiffchaff. Here are two images:

 

As you can see this chiff has a ring. Looking at the figures showing it is likely to have been ringed here on the Teifi.

 



A snipe at the Kingfisher Hide

Snipe are notoriously difficult to get good images of. First of all they are difficult to see as they spend their time feeding in the reeds, and secondly they are very shy birds so usually any sighting is of a distant bird. This week my luck changed and on seeing a pair of snipe feeding in nearby reeds they did not fly away but fly towards the hide! Managed several images with my 400mm lens, these two are probably the best:

An Osprey on the Teifi Marshes

Walking back from the Kingfisher Hide towards the car park last Thursday I was confronted by two excited bird watchers. They were very excited to see an osprey on our camera post near the osprey nest. I took a photograph of the bird and mentioned at the time that I thought it was a buzzard but was laughed at. I was told that it definitely was an osprey. When I arrived home and looked at my e-mail there was one from Nathan confirming the sighting of an osprey on the reserve. I phoned him and said that I had an image of the bird but thought that it was a buzzard - on looking at the image he confirmed that it was in fact a light coloured buzzard. Here is the image:

Better luck next time. This is one time I did not want to be right!