Mandarin Duck Couple

Yesterday morning I went for a walk through the Botanical Gardens and then to Endcliff Park and there I saw The Mandarin couple.
I had no camera with me but I thought that I will be back there in the evening and hope they are there still there.
Once I went out at evening it was dark clouds in the sky and the rain was close, but it can provide interesting pictures so I continued down to the pond.
The ducks were still there so I picked up the camera equipment, and just then it started to rain and it was a real shower, they 1.5hours that I was there, it was mixed weather. Then it's nice to have a camera equipment that can withstand rain.
It was actually the first time I photographed Mandarin female, I've seen it before but did not have my camera with me.
It was getting dark and the Mandarin couple wanted apparently not stay there overnight so they flew away.
Camera equipment: Nikon 3Ds and nikon 200-400 f4 lens with Kenko 1.4 konverter.

The Beautiful Mandarin Duck

As I wrote in the previous blog post, I then went down to Endcliff park and there was the beautiful Mandarin duck in place.
I'm Always happy to see the nice colorful duck, so it was just to take out the camera and take pictures.
I managed to get pretty close to the Mandarin, which has not happened before, but maybe it's the cold / winter which makes them less shy of humans.
Since the birds surely need more to eat, they know well that people usually will feed them with bread  and for that reason they cant resist to eat easily earn food.

camera equipment: nikon D90 and nikon 200-400mm f4 lens

Morning pics from Endcliff Park

This morning I went out early, I would go down to Endcliff Park and it takes about 25min to go there. I wanted to be there before the sun was up, and to be first in place then you have more chance to see some birds before they fly away scared of dogs and people. And this morning it was 5 mandarin ducks on site, 3 males and 2 females.
So I tried to shoot them in the dim light, to get a little more abstract pictures because it was not possible to get the sharp images mostly because they swam all the time.
They were there for a while when it was light, too, and then I was able to get a little closer they were otherwise entitled shy and kept away.
Then I went for a walk in the oak woods and looked at all the squirrels that is busy to hoard food for the winter. After been out for 2.5 hours i went home.

 

Camera eguipment i used: nikon 3Ds, nikon 200-400mm f4 lens and a monopod.

 

Abstrakt, mandarin

Male mandarin with 2 females behind him

Moorhen standing in the stream

Long-tailed tit

 

The Mandarin Duck

Rain rain rain, well what can you do when you live in England, summer seems to rain away. But that's what everyone says, that summer in England is rainy. hopefully the autumn is warm and dry. Well now it has been raining for about a week  not constant but it feels like it, so now it was time to go out and shoot birds that have a wet look. Put on my rain clothes and went out, but once I arrive at the location that today was Endcliff park well, then its stops raining : (  not wanted that now, I wanted to shoot wet birds. As I stood there by the pond, I saw herons and Greylag Goose which was not completely wrong, I had come to take pictures anyway. But when I was about to put together camera equipment,  there was  a Mandarin landing about ten feet from me. Hooray! I think finally, I photograph this beautiful duck, it was fortunate that it was not so shy, so I could get it pretty close. Well at least 5-6m away from it. I took pictures of it for a few hours and in different varieties, and it was well about 400 pictures, now stripped to 40 pcs. Unfortunately, the wall of the pond was in the way of getting pictures from a really low level that is really nice. But I am very pleased with these anyway, I thought it was a lovely light out even it was overcast. It helped that the images had a nice light, I think, anyway. :)

Wonderful colours

Feather cleaning

Taking a walk

nice reflection

stretching the wings

Greylag goose and heron

Greylag goose

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