Colourful Starlings

Starlings are amazingly colourful birds. They do often just look a bit drab, but if they've just had a bath in next doors pond, the their colouring becomes pretty obvious!

 

Cuckoos, Hobbies and Marsh Harriers at Stodmarsh

Here are my two favorite photos taken so far this year. As it happens, they were taken within about an hour of each other, at the same location - Stodmarsh NNR in Kent.

I've been to Stodmarsh perhaps half a dozen times now, and every time I've been, I've seen Marsh Harriers. They are completely reliable!

 What I haven't seen before though is nest building, which is what this female is up to.
 

 

Shortly afterwards, a Hobby landed in a nearby tree. I was just lining the shot up, when a cuckoo landed right next to it! Not something you see every day :-)

Littlehampton

At the weekend we visited Littlehampton on the south coast of England. It was a scorcher, so we headed for the beach:

These next shots were all taken with a 300mm lens plus a 1.4x teleconverter - when there's loads of light, teleconverters come into their own. Stopping down to f8 doesn't really prevent you taking sharp images in the way that it does on gloomier days.

I love the backgrounds produced by shingle - very colourfull!

 

On the way out we spotted these two Herring Gull chicks wondering around on a roof top near the car park (again, the car park is often the best place to look!)...

This one seemed to be having problems navigating the slippery roof - it managed it in the end though!

Shortlisted for BWPA 2011

This year I was again shortlisted the the British Wildlife Photography awards. Unfortunately though, it didn't come to anything. Here, below, is the picture that made the shortlist. It was taken at Chanonry Point, near Inverness in Scotland.

To be honest I was a little surprised it was picked, as the light is pretty poor, and there are plenty of better shots of dolphins taken from Chanonry Point to be found on the internet. Nevertheless, it was nice to chosen!