Saturday 12 January 2013

Inner London First!

This morning we were up and out by 8:30!  The plan was to go to Hyde Park to look for the two female Bearded Tits who had been seen there the day before!  An inner London first!
 Walking through the Park we stopped at a tree where you are meant to get Tawny Owls, unfortunately we couldn't find the Tawnies. Even local birder Des McKenzie couldn't see them!  So it was on to the Beardies next.  When we arrived there were only two other birders, Dominic Mitchell and fellow young wildlife photographer Oscar Dewhurst.  The Bearded Tits were visible from the moment we arrived by the stretch of reeds!  A lifer for me, taking my life-list to 131!  Although they showed well, it was no easy to get any decent photos as the wind kept blowing the reeds and they were almost always obscured by a couple of stems.
 Yet again the images are slightly 'noisy',this is due to the high ISO I had to use.  Although, stopping up the aperture to f/8 I managed to get a little detail, but a shutter-speed of just 1/80th was used, and with swaying reeds, it wasn't the preferable speed!
 We were with the birds for the best part of two hours and in that time I took over 260 images and videos!  For the most part they stayed deep in the reeds but did occasionally sortie out to the edges!  Twice they came down, out of the Reed beds to drink from a puddle, this was behind railings so I wasn't able to get any decent photos.






I only kept this shot as  it shows the swaying of the reeds which I quite like.

2 comments:

  1. Not the sort of bird you'd expect to see in London.
    Well done. Only ever seen them once before.

    ReplyDelete

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