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