{"id":1164,"date":"2008-06-29T22:06:22","date_gmt":"2008-06-29T21:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1164"},"modified":"2013-11-20T20:29:59","modified_gmt":"2013-11-20T20:29:59","slug":"wildlife-surprises-in-reading-berkshire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wildlife-surprises-in-reading-berkshire\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildlife surprises in Reading, Berkshire"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

We spent this weekend in Reading, a town just to the west of London. The reason for the trip was a friend's birthday, but we arrived during the afternoon and had a brief while to explore before heading off for the evening. I didn't have my full gear with me, but had taken the 70-300 DO lens, which is great for wandering around with. Reasonably small, but with a decent zoom. I was certainly glad I had it with me.<\/p>\n

Our hotel was five minutes from the river (the Thames runs through Reading), and I don't think I have ever seen quite such a gathering of swans in one place. They were out in large flocks, gathering at the water's edge to entertain young and old alike. And causing me no end of problems in trying to figure out the best exposure to capture their plumage against the relative darkness of the water. Here are a few of the shots, but there are several more in the Reading, Berkshire<\/a> album.<\/p>\n

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As well as the swans, there were numerous ducks.<\/p>\n

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And for sheer numbers, the geese were putting on a good show too. The goslings<\/a> were very cute as well.<\/p>\n

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But the big surprise was when I looked up in the skies. Not that there were very few seagulls (which is always a surprise) though I did see a couple of black-headed gulls sweep along the river, but a large bird of prey unlike any we see down here on the south coast. The first one I saw was some way off and I struggled to identify it. <\/p>\n

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It was about the size of a buzzard, but the tail was forked. That suggested a red kite, and I've since checked to see that they are increasingly common in that area. And there are plenty of them.<\/p>\n

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The full size shots<\/a> are in the album. I'd would have loved to have had the 400mm lens with me, but the trip confirmed that if I'm traveling light the 70-300 DO is almost unbeatable for flexibility. On checking the shots when I got back home I even seem to have caught a red kite at the point of grabbing something<\/a> from the air!<\/p>\n

I'm still sorting through the shots. For a trip out when I expected next to nothing in the wildlife stakes, I ended up with around 150 shots. And my first red kite! The party was great too! A good weekend \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

Camera note: all shots taken with the EF70-300mm 4.5-5.6 DO IS lens.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[990,980,989],"tags":[33,1160,191,432,433,339],"class_list":["post-1164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-of-prey","category-birds-2","category-water-birds-birds-2","tag-birds","tag-duck","tag-goose","tag-reading-berkshire","tag-red-kite","tag-swan","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t