February (part II)
Wow, what a privilege.
I managed to drag myself out again early on last Saturday morning to take myself for a walk to partly scout a new location and secondly to hopefully capture images of a Bird species that I have not seen since I was a child , the Kingfisher.
As I set out at 7am the weather looked terrible , the fine misty rain falling in a constant stream. To be fair some of the woodlands that I passed by on the way looked really spectacular and atmospheric. After about half an hour I reached the car park and having almost taken the sump out on a large rock began the process of changing to hiking boots and making sure I had everything with me that I might need. This gave the rain time to cease !!
Walking down through the woodlands of Porter Brook it was great to hear birdsong , a sure sign that we are heading towards Spring. There was also faint signs of growth in the plant life as well so this is definitely a positive step from the dark days of winter. I had the 100-400mm lens on my camera and so was looking for wildlife to act as subjects, unfortunately the light at this early hour meant that high ISO values would be needed or really low shutter speeds, but still it was great to look for locations that could be great photography spots. Finally I reached Forge Dam park and spent several minutes at the duck pond just looking for interesting images, the usual mix of Mallards and Mandarin ducks were around on the lake.
Continuing down the Porter Brook trail I enjoyed looking for potential spots to use in Landscape images and thoughts turned to when throughout the year it would be good to return. Finally I reached Bingham park and stopped at the Shepherd Wheel pond , as I reached the pond a couple passing the opposite way pointed to where a Kingfisher was perched , although at that moment in time it immediately flew away. I settled into a bench opposite where the Kingfisher had perched and waited (checking focus and settings etc while I sat there).
The Kingfisher didn’t return at this time so I chose to look at the next pond down and that is where the little chap was happily fishing away, just out of reach of my 400mmm lens and even adding the 1.4x teleconverter the subject was just too far out of reach on an overcast day.
So I sat , and watched the Kingfisher zooming backwards and forwards between perches, and decided to focus my attention on the other birds on the pond. After a while I moved on and looked around the rest of the park and found some crocuses that had begun to flower - purples , yellows and whites standing out on the grassy bank.
Returning back to the Shepherd Wheel pond, via the snack trailer , I once again settled in to wait and was rewarded with the Kingfisher landing on a perch that was well within the 400mm reach. Here the beautiful little bird fished and ate quite happily as myself and another Photography enthusiast snapped away - such an honour…
Finally it was time to walk back the nearly 3.5miles back to the car , which surprisingly was easy - possibly as I felt somewhat uplifted from the encounter with the Kingfisher..
