Category Archives: water birds

Cormorant and other fine birds at Falmer

A major thunderstorm passed across the South of England last night. Whether it’s coincidence or not, I don’t know; but a cormorant turned up at Falmer Pond this morning, and stayed for the day. It’s been a long time since one has pitched up at the pond, but it seemed set for the duration and was happily swimming up and down searching for fish.

Cormorant

Cormorant

Cormorant

Cormorant

It was nice to have one of the more interesting species back at the pond, but the gulls were also putting on a good display. This is a juvenile herring gull taking off from the water. Tracking this kind of movement has become a whole lot easier with the 7D Mark II. It really is incredibly responsive.

Herring gull

Herring gull

I’m really happy with the 7D Mark II, and am getting used to the multiple ways of setting up the autofocus. I sincerely doubt I’d have caught this final shot of a black-headed gull staring down the camera with the previous version.

Black-headed gull

The one irritation at the moment is that Lightroom won’t process the Raw files from the Mark II. No doubt an update will appear, but for the moment my work-flow has become: upload and sort in Digital Photo Pro v4.0; convert to TIF and download; upload TIFs to Lightroom; edit; download TIFs; upload TIFs to Photoshop; edit and convert to sRGB; download as JPG file. It’s slow, but it works!

Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D Mark II and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.

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Oystercatchers and other birds

The oystercatchers are the pick of today’s birds, but I’ll get to them in a moment. I’ll start with some early morning photos of the local heron, something of a fixture at Falmer Pond.

Once again we had sunshine in the morning.

Heron

Heron posing in the sunshine

Heron flying low over Falmer Pond

Heron flying low over Falmer Pond

Heron flying low over Falmer Pond

At this time of day, getting the best of the light depends greatly on where the subject is on the pond. The heron flew into shade, but at the far end the ducks were resplendent.

Female Mallard

Female Mallard

Male Mallard

Male Mallard

The best of the light had gone by lunchtime, but I had a few minutes to spare down at Rottingdean. I headed for the beach, where a smal lgroup of oystercatchers were gathered.

Oystercatchers

Oystercatchers on the beach at Rottingdean

Oystercatcher

Some were feeding…

Oystercatcher

Some were dozing…

Oystercatcher

This pair of oystercatchers were going for a stroll…

Oystercatcher

Oystercatcher on the Wing

One final treat, a passing cormorant.

Cormorant in flight

Cormorant in flight

All the shots today were taken with the 100-400 lens with a 1.4 extender attached. It’s a nice combination and performs well, though you are restricted to the centre focusing point with this combination. It does however turn the lens into a 560mm monster, which once you take into account the 1.6 crop factor on the 7D Mark II’s sensor equates to a more than respectable 896mm. You really can get in pretty close with that.

Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D Mark II and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens + Canon EF 1.4xIII extender.

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Cool Day for Coots

After yesterday’s deluge, some welcome sunshine. True, the ground was sodden, but it made a change to have blue skies. Still playing with the camera and trying things out, but there was no need to push ISO settings today so I just concentrated on taking pictures. Of coots.

Coot

There’s a small group of them on the pond, which is in itself slightly unusual. This isn’t one of their usual haunts, but they seem to be fitting in well with the ducks, gulls and moorhens. Like the slightly smaller moorhen, the coot is a member of the rail family and shares a number of characteristics, including absurd feet (though those were kept well out of sight today).

coot

“Smile for the camera”

Coot

Those are all early morning shots. There was more variety at lunchtime, and it was brighter.

There were ducks, dabbling…

ducks

Moorhens calling…

Moorhens

A herring gull splashing…

herring gull

And still there were coots, calmly patrolling the pond.

Coot

Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D Mark II and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens. I added the
Canon EF 1.4xIII extender for the final shot of the gull.

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