Thursday 20 August 2015

No patch visit was made today, instead I joined a friend in some very dreary and drizzly weather, for a visit to Bough Beech reservoir and then on to Sevenoaks Wildfowl Reserve.

At Bough beech we recorded 48 species in a little over two hours, although there wasn't much to excite, the best of it was seeing a few Green Sandpipers, a couple of Common Terns, a Kingfisher, 4 GREY WAGTAILS and the 3 raptor species of Buzzard, Kestrel and Sparrowhawk, the latter of which cleared the area of Sandpipers more then once.

On to Sevenoaks, where before we hit the reserve, we visited the camera shop, I picked up a new lens - the Canon 100-400mm MK11, with my friend purchasing a new camera - the Canon 7DMK11, buying them together gave us a discounted price  :-)

I was eager to try out my new lens, and once on the reserve, headed for the Willow Hide, which seems the best hide for camera opportunities, the light was mostly poor, but I got a few images of a Green Sandpiper, and both the Great Crested and Little Grebe, plus a few Little Egret shots. I'll save the Little Egret shots to brighten a later post, but here's the Grebe and Sandpiper efforts, a bit grainy with the high ISO used, but considering the light, I reckon the new lens performed really well, I was well pleased with it  :-)

Little Grebe - a bit better than yesterdays effort!




Great Crested Grebe


Green Sandpiper. It was always quite distant, but I was happy with the results




3 comments:

Marc Heath said...

A great start with the lens. Bet those dragons can't wait to see what this lens can do or me for that matter.

Warren Baker said...

Marc,
Just need a bit of sunshine now :-)

Pete Woodruff said...

Results from the new lens look good Warren, and the Green Sandpiper never fails to give me an added thrill to the day. I like the sound of your saying 'a few' of them.