Kingfisher

Today's dawn chorus walk was good, but it was also a very frustrating and quite stressful morning. We heard, saw and also had opportunities to photograph several birds that I had either never seen, or failed to get a photo of before. Unfortunately, the weather was against us as the entire day has looked and felt more like an autumn day: windy, chilly and very grey from start to finish. This made getting any decent photos very difficult and I'm even surprised that I managed to get anything good at all under the circumstances.

The Canon with its macro lens never made if out of my bag because it was too windy and the light was too poor, but the camera choice of the Nikon P900 proved to be a good one as I would otherwise never have been able to get this shot of one of a pair of Kingfishers that I have chosen as my main blip. Just my luck that we did not have some sunny and bright weather to get a sharper photo on the only occasion that I have finally seen more of them than just a brief blue flash.

The first two extra photos are possibly a Common Sandpiper and a Whitethroat. Please feel free to correct me if I have identified either incorrectly. The third extra is a Treecreeper, removing a fecal sack from its nest in a dead tree. I readily admit that I would never have spotted this tiny bird with its perfect camouflage or have guessed that it had a nest there if one of the guides hadn't mentioned it and pointed our where and what to look for.

Now I come to the main cause of this morning's frustration and stress. The joggers at the nature reserve! I find them the most irritating and inconsiderate people imaginable, because they seem to regard the place as their personal training area and stump around as noisily as possible, usually also chattering away when there's more than one of them, without even the slightest apology to anyone who is very obviously putting a lot of patience and effort into trying to get at photo of something.

This morning, when I'd gone back for another attempt to photograph the Treecreeper, something I'd failed to do successfully during the walk, you would have thought that there was a joggers convention taking place at the reserve because an almost constant stream of them kept thumping past me, making the wooden bridge that I was standing on vibrated quite strongly with every step they took. With barely a minute between each single jogger or group of them, during which the Treecreeper appeared only occasionally, it was sheer luck that I managed to get a sharp photo of the bird at all. Eventually, it got so bad that I had no choice but to admit defeat and leave. (Sorry for ranting on about this.)

I'm uncertain if it's because of my feelings regarding the joggers and today's weather, but I haven't enjoyed today's dawn chorus walk as much as the previous ones that I've been on and I'm now having some doubts about joining the nature society on next year's edition. 

Thank you very much for all the comments and stars on yesterday's entry.

I hope you don't mind if I only post today's blip and don't look at or comments on any other journals this evening but this morning's very early start is beginning to catch up with me and my alarm will already be going off again at 5 o'clock tomorrow morning. I shall do my best to catch up when I (hopefully) will have had a lie in on my day off on Tuesday.