Sunday morning up early, passports and travel insurance checked and off to Teeside with John (SW ) and Jeff NB (No Blog but acknowled expert in Valve Identification which proved very useful in Teeside)). First stop was Greatham Creek and plenty of Avocets around. There was 16 at one point:
The sun low on the horizon gave the opportunity for some great reflection shooting.
This pic shows an avocet alighting on a very rare No 4 Roof Ridge Tile (well spotted SW) which showed well through the day.
We then moved onto Saltholme and after a swift coffee and a good view of the Sand Martin from the Cafeteria we then walked round and stopping of at the 1st Hide (cant remember its name) we saw quite a few birds including my first ever view of a Hooded Merganser which came and posed quite well in front of the main windows. Unfortunately we had just missed the 4 Yellow Wagtail and the Greensandpiper.
We then wandered over to the next hide and on the way had some glorious view of Kestrel in full attack mode which I believe resulted in success as when it dived it did not come back up and we could see a bit of movement in the long grass
In the hide we were treated to a great display of 2 Great Crested Grebes for about 20mins doing their mirroring routine and a bit of passy the reed, unfortunately a bit far off for pics but in the next hide we had some good glimpses of 2 Little Egrets resulting in a "record shot".
Also a quick glimpse of my first hare of the year
Finally all this takes place within a hop, skip and jump of the biggest chemical concentration in Europe and I find it amazing that there are any birds here at all, although Jeff thinks he has died and gone to Valve and Pump Heaven.
6 comments:
Kracking Kestrel shots John
Brilliant shot of the diving kestrel - never seen one photographed like that....
Fantastic shot of the kestrel, and incredible that it can pull out of such a dive - while also nailing lunch!
Bollocks to the Kestrel,
Just look at that concrete conglomerate unfinnialed mid section RIDGIE. A real beaut.
Actually that Kestrel ain't bad, the Avocet reflection is quite nice also.
John
that diving kestrel is an exceptional piece of camera work but.......where are the valves, gate, eccentric or butterfly, i really don't mind, you have a tile but no valves
I must admit the Kestrel diving shot was a pure fluke, I was just pointing and clicking and when it dived I wasnt even looking through the viewfinder but just the camera instinctevely and pressed the button.
John
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