Better Days - Pt2

Following on from my last blog, here is the second installment.

As I pulled up at my first stop, I saw four raptors to my left circling up to gain height. As I had only recognised four large 'dots', I assumed they were Buzzard. Getting out of the car and training my binos, the top two birds were Buzzard, but as I scanned down, I was thrilled to see the lower two were Red Kite.

Now I had once see a solitary Red Kite near this location a few years ago so this was a good start. Within a short space of time, I grabbed the images that I shared in the last blog.

Scanning further with the binos, I soon found six Red Kites, and eight Buzzard. One of the Kites spent some time on the ground in a field to my left and then after being disturbed by a Buzzard decided to fly towards me. This sequence shows the results of its catch, and how it feeds while on the wing.

Red Kite + Worm in Flight

Next morsel goes in

All cleaned up' for flight again

Afternoon sunlight was kind to me

So within the space of a few minutes, I was up to three raptors.

Moving a little further on, I met up with a bird watcher and we shared a few stories. A decent sized flok of Golden Plover were dancing in the light too, showing their wonderful profile and changing tones as the flock wheeled. Sadly, they were too distant to bother with the camera. The first Hare of the day showed itself, and another half dozen Buzzards were around, or maybe they were the same as the earlier ones.

Moving on again, I was fortunate enough to see seven more Hare in one field, three in another and another couple in a third field. A couple of Ravens let me know of their presence with their distinctive calls, while the Buzzard count went to around about twenty and even more pleasing, I would estimate that there were a total of about 25 Red Kite too. Flocks of Yellowhammer and Skylark were also interesting to watch and hear.

But it was shortly after seeing the Yellowhammer, that one of my target species flew into view - a stunning male Hen Harrier. Into the sun from my location, and I watched it for about thirty seconds only, but beautiful nevertheless, a real thrill.

Moving back to the second site, I rejoined the birder and we looked for the male HH but to no avail. We did see two female Hen Harriers hunting the rough cover, one of them spooking up a Short Eared Owl into flight.

Following the direction of flight of the SEO, I found it sat down in the middle of a field, into the light and too distant sadly.

That little tiny blob below is it, and the massive crop just merely allows me to confirm identification. I watched it for about 45 mins but it was quite content to just sit there and outstare me.

As the light got lower and lower, I moved towards home. A further sighting of a Sparrowhawk on my way back brought my raptor numbers up to six species. My challenge to get some decent SEO shots again remain but for me the birdwatching element of the day was probably the best bit for me.

It made my thoughts from a recent outing seem like a distant memory

Fingers crossed for more days like this

Martin

Mini Trip Report - Part 5 - Poor Light

Sometimes, no matter what, and no matter how the light on the subject is always going to be crap.  It is at times like that that we really (usually) do know better and should go off and do something else.  When I took my recent trip to Gigrin to the Red Kites - see previous posts here , here and here.  the light on the first day was awful.  It wasn't likely to get better and I knew the images were going to be crap.

So why did I stay for a couple of hours in the cold and miserable weather?  Many reasons

1.   It was time to experiment!!

2.    It gave me the opportunity to check out my C1, C2 and C3 settings to make sure things were still in order.

3.   Have a crack at using the flash to infill

4.   To get some practice in for the next day when I hoped the weather was better.

5.   To study my subjects behaviour - how the flew, how they fed so I was better equipped for next time.

6.   Lastly and most importantly, I just love watching the wildlife - a picture is a bonus

So here are a couple of shots to demonstrate that you cannot make a sows purse from a pigs ear when the light is shite!!

Both with 7D, ISO1600, 500 f4L, 580EX flash head plus Better Beamer giving the 'steel eye' look.  I could have edited it out - but the images would still be poor.  So here for a demonstration for you.

What was clear to me though was that the 7D AF works well in poor light, and did when against a background where there was limited contrast.

Mini Trip Report - Part 4 - Red Kites

OK I promised you Red Kites last time so here they are.

Not too much commentary - just a few pictures to share with you.

 Shouty

 Slow shutter speed for wing blur but sharp where it matters

 Carrying away the food

 Juvenile bird

Its worth clicking on the images to view in large. The shots of the Kites against a background were not possible with the 1Dmk3 - this is where the 7D has proved so great.  With the ability to click between C1 and C3 modes on the dial select, it was easily an instant change when going for either background or clear sky shots.  I wrote about that here. 


By the way, all these images were processed in Capture One with only the final crop and sharpen in CS5 - an expensive way to sharpen and crop perhaps.  but when you get the exposures well and you have a great RAW processor this is little else to do for these type of shots.  If you are wondering why the blues in the sky are not all the same - simple - the shots were taken over a couple of hours towards sunset, occasional bits of thin cloud came through and I was shooting at different angles to the sun.

I will bring you another couple of posts from this trip at least yet.  We have Buzzards to come along with Kite behaviour, flash in poor light and finally the White Kite.  So keep dropping by.

Mini Trip Report - Part 2 - Gigrin Farm

In this part of the trip report, I am just going to do a short piece on the location and share some pcitures of the the hides, and in particular the new photo hide.

Now there is absolutely stacks of information on their website so you can browse this for hours.

It is located in just about the centre of Wales just half of a mile outside Rhayader on the A470 to the south east - ignore the red blob on the link.  If you zoom in on the OS map you will see it.

I went there just about three years ago with a number of other photographers and we block booked both of their then new photographic hides.  One at ground level and one raised known as the Tower Hide.

They have since added to this with the Big Tower hide, which as the name suggests is even bigger and gives a more impressive view.

Rates vary from £10 to £20 dependant on which hide you choose to take.  This last weekend we used the Big Tower on both occasions.  They can get booked up so it is worth a call to check availability before you go

View of the hides from the Big Tower Hide

 View out from the Big Tower

In the Big Tower Hide - plenty of room

All these images were taken with the little Panasonic P & S camera on the crappy weather Saturday!!

And in a first for me on the blog a few movie clips.  Now these are really quite poor and straight out of the Panasonic again the first one taken on the poorly lit Saturday, but it gives you an idea of the sort of activity that you can see andd the type of flying by the birds.  You will see lots of corvids and you can also feeel sorry for the Buzzard.  This is fairly typical for them getting hammered by the Kites

In my next part I will share some of the better Kite images that I got on the sunny Sunday, which I hope you will agree when you see then are much better than the video.

Martin

Late post - Trip report sneek preview

I mentioned a couple of posts ago about Autumn Spectaculars and that I would let you know where I have been when I have been.

With a great weekend of weather forecast, Jac and I took ourselves off to Wales this weekend to catch up with the spectacular Red Kites at Gigrin Farm.

The weather didn't do as forecast and was awful on Saturday with grey skies and horrible light.

We started off dropping into a Worcestershire Wildlife Trust reserve at Upton Warren first thing.  Lots of Lapwing, Mallard, Shoveller, Teal, a couple of huge rafts of Coot  - nothing spectacular to be honest.  We did see a Pectoral Sandpiper on the far side - too small to photograph, a couple of Kingfishers - too far and too fast to photograph, and a lovely Green Sandpiper, which I will share on my next post. 

As I type this, I am busy downloading stacks of images so haven't had a chance to process anything yet.

Moving on to Wales, the light was abysmal but we persevered.  What was quite noticeable was that the 7D AF was far superior in worse light than the last time I went there.  Three years ago, I organised a trip for nine other photographers - five of us were using the 1Dmk3, and five of us couldn't get it to work in that light.  Well with worse light yesterday, I did work.  I also tried the flash with the better beamer, and will share some results of that with you.

Notwithstanding the weather though, four to five hundred Red Kites are pretty spectacular and we had a great time there.

After a stop over at a pleasant hotel we took ourselves back there again today, but not until we had visited a few other places on route and saw another Kingfisher and Green Sandpiper, a couple of female Goosanders, a Peregrine seeing off a Raven, six Bullfinch, six Redwing, numerous Meadow Pipit, a stack of Red Kite, Buzzard and Raven over the hills.

Arriving at Gigrin again, the weather was wonderful - blue skies, a decent breeze for the kites to work with, a few white clouds from time to time and another massive amount of Kites.  I kept shooting til I ran out of CF cards and then switched to the 1D and used the SD cards.  With bright light, it appeared to work fine, but I haven't checked the results yet.

So it was a fab weekend - knackered now and looking forward to sorting out the good from the bad images.

Hope you all had good weekends too .

Will share the outputs later this week.

Martin