Golden Plower

A couple of nights ago, I was off to Redmires again to try shoot Golden plower.
It was tough in the beginning they were not where I expected they would be, I was thinking if it's the nice weather that has been now for a few weeks, made them change places.
It's pretty dry in the fields and they maybe just moved to places where it's a little wetter for there it might be easier to find food.
Anyway, after strolling around the area for a few hours I started to give up hope of getting a photo of the bird, I heard that they were there because they beep quite a lot in the evenings but it's hard to see them in the tall heather bushes .
The sun would be about an hour behind the horizon, so now it was a little hurry, but when I was on my way home walking in the heather, I heard a beep that came from an area where they have burned away heather and there it was.
But now I had to get close enough to get some good pics of it, so I lie down and crawl into the heather and hope that it would not fly away, but I was lucky that the bird was not so afraid, I could lie in the heather and try to attract it using whistle.  But closer than 10m it did not come,  I was pretty happy anyway.

This weekend I will go to the south/west coast of Wales, where I'll visit Skomer island. It's a small island that is known for its wildlife, especially puffins for there is southern England's largest colony of them. There is also 1/3 of the world's Manx shearwaters, but they only come to the island in the dark hours so it will probably be no photos of them.

Golden Plower/ljungpipare beeping

 

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.

Kingfisher

Here are some more Kingfisher pictures, from the time when it still was snow, the snow disappeared for 1.5 weeks ago and after that it has been spring-time temperatures.
But instead it is very windy, and we also had thunderstorms two times, which feels a little bit strange  in late January :))
For some images I have used 2.0 teleconverter and 200-400mm lens, and that's because i wanted to get closer to the bird.
But it has the disadvantage that its aperture is f8 instead of f4 which means it needs lot more light or raise the Iso on the camera, which does not feel good because the quality of the image gets even worse.
The sharpness of the images also becomes worse and to get the best out of the combo, you should increase the aperture to 11 or more, but then it becomes even more difficult with the light.
Well enough about that, every time  I've been to the kingfisher I've tried to get the pictures of it when it's flying or splashing in to the water images, but it's so incredibly difficult.
The little bird is so fast, so the moment when it dives from the branch into the water is lightning fast and  to see where it lands and then try to point the camera there seems hopelessly impossible.
But today I'm going down again, I hope it is still there otherwise I will enjoy the the storm winds.