A few birds from yesterday

Good afternoon Everybody!!!!

Despite the weather it was quite a good day for me on the birding front. Quite a few 1st sightings. Sadly some of them were fairly distant so did not really get good images of them, an 800mm would of come in handy

So apologies about the quality of some of these images. I ended up highly cropping a few. I have added the original to one of the images to show you the comparison. Not sharp but still happy with the detail after crop

All in all it was a good day - 1st sightings -

Goldcrest
Blackcaps - 2 Sat in tree about 10 feet away, by the time i lifted up camera they flew off so never managed an image of them.
Oystercatcher - Another one i did not get a clear image of, he was very distant and i was using the camera handheld so image ended up a little blurred so not uploading that one.
Redshank - Not a good image as distant.
Shelduck family - Beautiful large ducks.

On to the images

There are a few usual suspects in here too.

(1) Greylag Chick



(2)Greylag Family



(3)Mother Geese - 3 Greylags with Chicks.



(4&5) Shelduck family





(6, 7&8) Lapwing Orginal and crop and her eying up the Greylags



The cropped Lapwing image is not supercropped, did not want it to look too cramped.



The Lapwing was a bit of a bully, trying to scare off the greylags, she kept flying around and going for the chicks but both birds stood their ground.



(9)Common Tern. - Tried to get this one in a dive, hard to keep in focus though with the 400mm on, may of been better using the 300mm.



(10) Redshank - Super cropped again



(11) Goldcrest - I was lucky to be able to get any detail at all out of this image, it was dull and i was in a little bit of a woodland the original image ended up dark. He was about 20 feet away give or take.
Image has been slightly cropped.



(12) Onto two usual suspects, a Great tit looking for grubs and a Swan





3 birds i did want to capture in flight yesterday were Swifts, Swallows and House Martins. Talk about difficult though with 400mm at full extension. Fantastic watching them at the reservoirs though, hundreds of them fishing, and flying less than a couple of feet when flying over you. great to see.

I approve every one of these photos...as if you need or want my approval I would be happy with them...most are strangers to me...only the greylag geese are familiar...there are common terns here in Florida but since I don't get to coastal areas much I don't see them very often. Shirley

Thank you very much Shirley. Birdlife all over the world is so diverse, its great seeing photos of birds from different parts of the world, after a while it makes up one heck of a colourful portfolio.

A super mix.

You did well to spot the goldcrest. The 3 Greylag geese in a row are great and I do like the swan shot.

Goldcrest is well spotted! They are very hard to photograph normally!

Aren't baby Shelduck the best?

xx

Nice set, im glad to see the Shelduck with their offspring. they are not the best parents, ive seen whole broods devoured by gulls while the parents wandered off.

The Greylag Chick is so cute, we have some Canadian geese chicks on the lake at the mo, you have spurred me on Mark

Thank you Ken, Brian, Laura and Phil

It was great seeing a lot of the waterbirds with young. The Shelduck family are lovely, fantastic markings on baby and parents. The Greylag numbers were good, lots of chicks.

The Goldcrest made up for me missing the Blackcaps. I was just walking along the edge of the bit of woodland next to the reservoir when this little fella caught my eye. It looked at 1st like a Wren, until i focused it in the view finder and noticed it had a yellow head, he did not stay still for long but managed 4 shots, 2 blurred and 2 okay. Although all images were dark as camera settings were wrong and images were very underexposed, thankfully i was able to clean them up on the PC

Did you notice he had been ringed??