Last Wednesday I had a free morning and spent it at Minsmere. The last few times I've been I've spent most of my time in Bittern or Island Mere Hides looking for Marsh Harrier and Bitterns, this time I spent most of my time wandering the paths just seeing what popped up.
First up Long-tailed Tits, staying still long enough for a photo for a change.
My hearing isn't very good at the high pitch end so I can't hear things like Bearded Tits, but I was hearing Chiffchaffs and Cetti's Warblers everywhere I went. I'm trying a new Bird ID app. called Merlin and it's very good, walking through the reed beds it heard Bearded Tits for me and shortly after a small group flew over and I managed a couple shots good enough for ID purposes.
Down along the dunes, as ever, were Stonechats.
From East Hide I had very distant views of the Garganey amongst many other birds, including this fly past of Shovelers.
Heading back to the Visitor Centre I finally saw as well as heard this Chiffchaff.
Then on to the Sand Martin bank and a bit of birds in flight practice with my newish camera.
After a while I went for the birds near the nest holes, easier to get in the view finder but further away and against a background almost the same colour as the birds.
It took a bit of work on the computer to make them standout as much as they do. I also tried my high speed burst mode at 25 frames a second to try and get the birds at the right angles and when I got home I found I'd taken nearly 2000 pictures and created a lot of work finding the best out of a lot of very similar shots. I've only kept about 1% and I won't do this too often.
Lots of near misses in the activity around the nest holes.
Time ran out and I headed home not knowing quite what I'd got until a rainy day gave me some computer time to sort through the pictures.
Best Wishes,
Trevor
Hi Ian,
A female ducks life can be hard, I saw these two Pintails at North Warren January last year, at least there was only the one male.