Birds in Flight - Bittern Bonanza!

Well, this is where I ended up by the end of the day ...

... but the visit to RSPB Ham Wall started off quite differently.

Note that any of the photos in this particular Blog will get bigger if you click on them.

In fact nothing much was happening. Just an atmospheric shot of a female Marsh Harrier floating against the background of Glastonbury Tor.

 And then a bit nearer:

Then there was the episode with the Little Grebe catching a fish, and eating it.

I had never seen that before. I thought that they caught much smaller animals, but this one had relatively little problem with that sizeable Perch.

Walking on, I came to an aerial tussle between a Crow and a Buzzard.

 
But the real excitement only started once I had settled in the Tor View hide. For a while, nothing. But then I spotted a Bittern that had come to the edge of the reed bed. It was standing on some reed stems that it had bent over. You can just make it out in this shot.

I alerted the other three or four photographers in the hide and we did our best. What we were all waiting for of course was for it to take off and fly to the other side of the water channel, something I had seen Bitterns do before at that spot.

For all the clatter of camera shutters, very few good shots were obtained. It is just so difficult to keep the bird in view at that relatively close range. The shot above was probably one of the better ones.

Normally, that would have been that for the rest of the afternoon. Bitterns usually just stay put. But this one was obviously not happy. For fifteen minutes or so I heard it growling and grumbling to itself from the depth of the reeds. I just knew it was going to fly out again, so I trained my lens on the reed face and waited. Sure enough, it eventually took flight and I was prepared for it. I got this rather spectacular series of shots.

Needless to say perhaps, I was over the moon with them. You should see the originals! The Canon 7D Mk2 autofocus was set up exactly as described in one of my other Blogs at

http://johncrabbwildlifeimages.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/birds-in-flight-with-canon-7d-mkii.html

So it all just goes to show that you have to keep faith. Even if nothing is happening, keep calm and patient. One day you will get a stroke of luck! Guaranteed!

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More from the marsh!

I had always thought of summer as the quiet period for bird watching and photography. Not this year though!

Having spent much of my last Blog entry moaning about missing the best of the bird action, I happened to be in the right place when this Bittern came out of the edge of the reed bed to have a look at the world. I think it may be a young one. As I watched, it looked like it might be about to launch into the air, but each time thought better of it and crept back into the cover of the reeds. It did do a bit of posing though, including an attempt at adopting the famous vertical-neck posture to blend in better with the reeds - it is actually known as "bitterning" apparently.

Just in passing, I must mention that my new Canon EF 400mm f4 DO II is giving me some astonishingly sharp photos. This bird was a good 40 or 50 metres away, but cropping in more tightly to these already cropped photos shows how sharp the bird was. That is with a 1.4x converter too. I do not think that the original DO lens would have performed as well.

Apart from this very obliging bird, there were other bitterns on the wing from time to time. It is easy to miss them as they usually make no noise to announce their presence, and the first thing you notice is them gliding silently by too late to raise the camera. Got this one though.

Although the marsh at Ham Wall seemed quiet, a little patience paid off. Here a Swan is taking exception to the insistent presence of a Cormorant.

It ended up giving it a good hissing to! The Cormorant was not bothered. Here it is making a bit of a splash to show its disdain.

 
Here in Somerset we are still lucky to be seeing Great Egrets every day. A fabulous sight and I am still very keen to photograph them. This one was calling as it erupted from the reed bed.

I am also always on the look out for those other charismatic birds of the wetlands, Marsh Harriers. They seldom come close enough for a good shot, but these are not bad.

At the other end of the size range is this Reed Warbler, although you would be forgiven for not recognising it. It has lost most of its head feathers and looks distinctly weird!

I once saw a photo of a Robin looking like this and it was perched on a sign which read "Queue here for sympathy." I have no idea if this was genuine or not, but it was very apt.

You will also have noticed that there are no Barn Owls in this post. I think the obliging day-flying individual that has featured in the last few posts has become nocturnal or moved away. Here it is taking a dubious look at the daylight and deciding it would go back to bed.

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Thanks!

Here is a post from my Facebook page that you may have missed.

I caught this Cormorant eating its lunch at #RSPB Ham Wall. You can read the whole story about this and a selection of...

Posted by John Crabb Wildlife Images on Wednesday, July 8, 2015