Another trip to Minsmere and North Warren, lots of Warblers plus something different this time

Last Wednesday was hot and sunny, early on the Warblers were showing well at Minsmere but late morning it got busy and hot so I went to North Warren in the hope of seeing Hobbies again. Here's what happened.

At Minsmere a Reed Warbler popped up in a bush right in front of me.

Singing Sedge Warbler.

Another Reed Warbler.

Common Blue Damselflies, I think.

Young Dunnock

Experimenting with semaphore.

4 Spotted Chaser

Stonechat

Bird's Foot Trefoil

White throat

Then off to North Warren to look for Hobbies

Sedge Warbler heading to it's nest.

4 Spotted Chaser just taking off. 

From the hide where I've seen Hobbies before I was lucky to look down at water at the right moment.

A Grass Snake, about 3 to 4 feet long came out of the reeds. The water is covered in seeds from nearby trees.

Then it made it's way back into the reeds.

On the way back to my car, sadly the best part of 2 miles away on a very hot afternoon, I saw my first Black-tailed Skimmer.

Then another 4 Spotted Chaser.

On technical point for this and the last picture I pushed the ISO up to 3200, even though it was in full sun, to get get a shutter speed of 1/5000 sec to try and freeze the wing motion and used F8 to increase the depth of focus. I'm very pleased with the lack of grain at that ISO, to be fair the pictures have been processed in DXO Photo Lab 4 which does a great job of reducing high ISO noise.

Then one of those what are those people ahead of me looking at moments, a Fox in a field of Konik Ponies

All in all, well worth the long hot walk.

All the best

Trevor

  • Thanks PB,
    Initially I was frustrated by the Warbler in the nettles, then I realised that once I got focus (and it was spot auto-focus and not manual) the peering through the nettles enhanced the shot and I'm very happy with the result. I've got plenty of other bird pics with the vegetation being the only thing in focus though.
    I was in Vietnam a couple of years ago and was surprised and disappointed at the lack of wildlife, probably courtesy of Napalm and Agent Orange from the 70's although there is plenty in dedicated reserves, areas which i think escaped the carpet bombing, which our tour didn't visit sadly.
    Trevor.
  • My daughter had bigger gonads than me, she and her fella went out with 2 nights accommodation booked somewhere near the airport, then winged it for 3 weeks!! Closest I've been to not knowing where I'm going to be staying was a week's boating on the Broads with half a dozen school friends just after 6th form, and not knowing which pub we were going to tie up at lol
  • Well done your daughter, it's a great way to travel and Vietnam is a good friendly place to do it
    Back in the 80's I travelled to Mexico with a friend (back in my single days) with nothing more than return flight tickets, a Lonely Planet guide and a Spanish phrase book with everything I needed for 4 weeks in hand luggage. I did manage one trip like that with my wife a few years later but now everything is booked and I can hardly lift the luggage. Oh, that's stirred something up, just to even think about doing it again would be nice, perhaps one day. The Falklands is considered safe and it is on my bucket list and my wife is happy to go one day, so who knows.
    Trevor