Woodie woodpecker

This Greater spotted woodpecker decided to make a nest hole right next to the path. amazing really when you consider there is a whole wood of trees available. I hope to return to get picturesof the GSW feeding chicks in the near future.

Warwickshire warblers

Spent the morning at Brandon Marsh with my mate Eric, the amount of warblers around was amazing, it was also my first outing with the new 1D4. its an amazing camera. the level of detail produced is incredible, and so nice and sharp too.

The Autofocus system is very complicated , I will be doing as much practice as possible so i can get to grips with all the features and functions.

Deeply Dippy

Last week i spend a couple of hours in the peaks with Jen, looking for Dippers. eventually we spotted a couple, but they shot of a lightning speed. !!! in the direction we had just walked from.

Talk about fast, these birds dont hang about.

Whilst walking back i spotted a couple of birds, feeding / fishing in a small water fall, this seems to be there favorite habitat. These two birds didnt seem to shy and i was able to edge closer and got within 8 feet.

The light was very low, and i struggled with shutter speeds to get the excect picture i was after , but i was still very please with the pictures i got from this session..

I had a couple of shots of the dippers splashing about in the water fall, but the shutter speed was to low to get a nice sharp pic, i was using ISO500, F4.5 and only had 1/50th of a second shutter speed. hope you enjoy the pictures.

All Quiet on the western Front

It was so quiet today at my local spot ,(which is actually work)

my office is set in 90 acres of mixed woodland, wetland and fields.

Its like having my own personal nature reserve.

There we hardly any birds around, even the common ones.

This kestrel seemed very content and didnt mind me walking around, which is strange , normally as soon as you point a camera at these birds they fly off.

This was my first chance to get this close to a kestrel since i started wildlife photography.

Dont count your Chickens

Reallity hit home yesterday . over the past Few months me and my Friend Eric have been visting a site where Barn and Short Eared Owls (SEO) have been sited. on the first occasion we only caught a glimpse of an SEO. and all further trips were pretty much useless.

Yesterday the weather look perfect, so i booked the afternoon off and headed out to the site.
The owls showed really well for the first time. 2 barn owls and 3 SEO's

There was a large group of people watching , birdwatchers and photographers. and the owls didnt come that close.
So i snapped away , using AI-Servo on my canon for the first time, thinking i was getting some great shots , and checking on the camera screen seemed to confirm this. To be honest i should know alot better, but i got carried away in the moment not knowing where to point my camera next, with so many owls in one field.

I rushed home with much excitement only to be very disapointed in the amount of keepers i had. The Moral of this story is dont count your chickens until they are hatched. !!

New Lens

I took Delivery of my new Canon 500mm F4 on Tuesday. its an amazing lens.

I got to test it for the first time on wednesday when i visted a country park with Eric Weight

we got some cracking pictures of heron. which wasnt fussed at all and let us take pictures for an hour before some swans came along and chased it away.

Conditions were quite hard as it was a very over cast day.

shutter speeds around 50th of a second we normal even with ISO ranges of 500. i was very lucky to get a shot as sharp as this with that shutter speed.

Hi and Welcome

Hi, I will hope to be posting regular escapades on this site of my photography adventures as i lurch from one disaster to another. :-). and hopefully get some pictures along the way.

i am still fairly new to this naturephotography lark.. i started in Nov 2007 on Nikon.

and now shoot canon, so i can pinch and borrow lenses from my photography mates, who all seem to shoot canon too.