Its the wrong lens Gromit

After yesterday's snow we were promised a sunny but cold day today, so I made an effort to be up and out on my walk earlier than usual.  The main reason for wanting to be out early was that the fields would still be frozen and therefore largely walkable.  As the day progressed the ice and remaining snow would melt and the fields would return to their quagmire state.

I'd been told by some fishermen that they had seen a Kingfisher on the river, and I had rough idea of the stretch that they had been fishing in, so I thought it might be a good idea to do some reconnaissance, although I wasn't that hopefully of being able to find it.

As this was to be a reconnaissance,  I had decided not to take the big lens, and instead to carry some binoculars.  What a mistake.  Almost as soon as I left the house I came across two buzzards sunning themselves on a fence by some of the pony paddocks.  I nearly turned back to get a long lens at that point but the prospect of having to take my boots and gaiters off etc was all too much trouble.

From there on, practically every bit of local birdlife came to say hello and the 24-70mm just didn't cut it. Finches, tits, robins, blackbirds, thrushes and red wings, wrens, crows, rooks, jackdaws, magpies, sparrows, dunnocks and cormorants, there were, in abundance. I even surprised a pair of gooseanders which quickly scarpered off up stream.

At Swinford (my half way point) the water has fallen considerably and it was possible to use the lock gates to get on to the island, where I sat in the sunshine and used the binoculars to look up river. It looked as though there might have been a flash of blue on the opposite bank, but further exploration showed it was a small bit of blue plastic caught in a tree.

As I walked on I scanned the opposite bank with the glasses and eventually I found the kingfisher.  It was miles too far away for me to capture with the 24-70mm lens, but I now know roughly where to start looking for it in future, so who knows, if we can get a dry bright day I may yet get a shot of the little chap.

I'd been keeping pretty still during this time, so I think that this is why, when I turned the next bend in the river I was able to surprise the gossanders again.  This is a cropped shot of the male and female as they took off and flew away but its the best I could do with the lens.

Needless to say I did also take a number of frosty landscape shots, but I'm not blipping any of them - this is my first picture of a gossander and you will have to make do with that instead :-)