Wildlife Photography across the Water: Mini Trip Report - Norfolk

Thursday, 13 January 2011

Mini Trip Report - Norfolk - Part 1

Each year in the period between Christmas and New Year, I have always kidded myself that there is loads of time and I am always going to get so much done. Well after the excesses of Christmas, and the compulsory family visits I find I run out of time and end up achieving nothing in that huge amount of time. Well this year was different and on 28th December, Jacqui and I got up very early and headed off to Norfolk for four days.

Sadly, the weather was very unkind to us in terms of photographic light with misty, murky and foggy conditions and at the darkest time of the year, I found myself wishing for Nikon like ISO resolution. While the 7D is very good, I don't think it is as good as the Nikon's that Dave is used to. Anyway - we make do with what we have, make sure we expose correctly and do our best.

This mini trip report will be in three parts with this bit covering some of the general bird pictures, Part 2 will cover the Grey Seal pups and finally the best bit, the Barn Owls.

With the light, as I said, beggars cant be choosers so here is a small selection.

Winter plumage Black Headed Gull at Salthouse

Black Tailed Godwit with shellfish

Teal Drake at Salthouse

Teal Drake at Salthouse, blowing bubbles

Turnstone shaking its head at slow shutter speed - bizarre effect

Turnstone at Brancaster

Turnstone at Salthouse

I was grateful to the Turnstones as they are such entertaining and very friendly little characters. I was laying on the ground at Brancaster getting photos of these, while there were dozens of twitchers looking at very distant tiny speck dots of a couple of Hen Harrier. I preferred to photograph bids I could actually see with the naked eye. The Turnstones were coming up to me, closer than the minimum focus distance of the 500 and taking a good look at me, and virtually taking seed from my hands.

Sadly, there were no Snow Buntings down at Salthouse yet, although we did see 11 of them while we were up at Titchwell on the first day

Back with the Grey seal pups next time,

Martin

1 comment:

Paul Davis16 January 2011 at 14:13
Love the bird images and apparently there is a bumper crop of grey seal pups this year, I can't wait to go and watch them

Cheers
Paul
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Bio's

David Courtenay, a self taught wildlife and nature photographer, has been capturing images for over 30 years. He has had a passion for wildlife since early childhood and remembers being glued to the television whenever Survival, Wildlife on One and other natural history documentaries were shown. In the 2006 he swapped his established career for the life of a wildlife photographer, such a move demands a measure of uncompromising passion and commitment.

David has travelled extensively throughout Europe as well as spending more than 7 months in India working with local guides and trackers in search of Bengal Tiger, Asian One horned Rhino and Asian Elephant. He has also photographed Wildlife in Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sumatra, Africa, Canada and America. Working closely with Conservation companies he tries to raise funds to help Wildlife that has been put on the endangered list by poaching and habitation loss

Martin Dyer has had a passion for avian wildlife since childhood, particularly raptors. Photography was also another keen interest and it was with the specific availability and control of the whole process that digital offers that Martin was then able to combine the two in 2003. Based in the UK, Martin is a regular visitor to Scotland, specifically the Isle of Mull to watch the Eagles resident there. Other trips to Europe and around the UK are usually part of Martin’s agenda in a typical year.

However, as a firm believer on making the most of the local patch, Martin has spent a lot of time and hard work creating a wildlife garden which is reaping the rewards with many new species and varieties of wildlife. A keen member of a number of wildlife photographic groups, Martin is keen to expand his portfolio into other areas of wildlife, and has already established a wide portfolio of images of fungi.