Caught one ....

I went out this afternoon with a 100mm macro on my camera fully intent at emulating the constant gardener who had captured a midge flying a couple of days ago. HERE When I got down by the river I could see the midges buzzing around just above the surface of the water. I tried manually focussing just above water level and then shot off a sequence of about a dozen shots in about a second and a half but was nowhere near getting them sufficiently in focus. I should no doubt have chosen a much smaller aperture to give maximum depth of field but shooting down into the slightly murky water the light levels were not at all good. I then got into conversation with one of my neighbours who was also walking her dog and abandoned the project.

However just round the corner looking down onto to the beach I could see a number of birds fairly nearby. Then as one of them began to fly and opened his wings wide I could see it was a heron. I was able to track it for a while until it left the beach and turned in land flying overhead. I thought that was that but was happy I'd got a number of sharp pictures of it flying over the beach.

I turned round myself to walk the dogs around the lake and then realised that the heron had landed by a far patch of reeds. I gradually worked my way round to it and was really surprised how close it let me come considering I'd got a couple of dogs with me. Eventually it flew off and I was able to get another sequence of it flying across the lake. But before that I had been able to observe and photograph it stalking fish and, in fact, catching one. I, therefore had a load of images of the heron to chose from, for my blip but in the end thought this was the most dynamic as it is is the process fo catchig a fish. I afraid you will not only need to look LARGE but also have a magnifying glass to see the fish. Still I fortuitously caught my blip !