{"id":1341,"date":"2009-03-21T23:03:11","date_gmt":"2009-03-21T23:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1341"},"modified":"2013-11-15T00:11:45","modified_gmt":"2013-11-15T00:11:45","slug":"snake-in-the-grass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/snake-in-the-grass\/","title":{"rendered":"Snake in the grass"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

After a very hectic week at work (hence so few posts) we took time out today to head over to Pulborough Brooks, the RSPB wetland bird reserve. It's a beautiful spot and on a day like today it attracts more than a few bird watchers and photographers. It's almost worth a visit just to see the array of hardware people are prepared to carry around \ud83d\ude09 The visitors tend to divide between the spotters (with over-sized spotting scopes, tripods and binoculars) and photographers (with over-sized camera gear, monopods, and binoculars). It's a close run thing as to which group carries the greater weight around the reserve. But for me, it's the camera and I turned up with three lenses and the monopod. Two of the lenses got used (the 100-400mm and the 105 macro). <\/p>\n

Oh and of course there are birds… Here are some of the highlights:<\/p>\n

\"lapwing\"Lapwing showing off its aerial skills<\/span> <\/a><\/p>\n

\"teal\"A lone teal… I think a first for me.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\"canadaThe canada geese were present in good number.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\"wigeons\"The wigeons were a delight to watch… such wonderful colours.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\"nuthatch\"And I even got a shot of a nuthatch. Yes!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Technically, of that little selection the teal and wigeons are a first (at least in terms of knowing what I was looking at), and although not a true first (I've seen them before) that is the first usable photo of a nuthatch I've managed. <\/p>\n

But all that pales into the margins when we came across this.<\/p>\n

\"adder\"Adder<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

It was sunning itself on the edge of some woodland. Finding it was easy… its location was clearly marked by the number of people crowding round with all manner of cameras, from macros to zooms. To be fair though, everyone was being extremely careful not to disturb it… a bite from a venomous snake is something to be avoided. I did wonder though about the sanity\/safety of the person filming it on a camera phone. A bite from one of these is absolutely not to be recommended.<\/p>\n

A couple more of the shots I managed… The undergrowth hadn't made things easy, but these are of a second adder spotted about 30 yards from where we came across the first one.<\/p>\n

\"adder\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"adder\"<\/a><\/p>\n

No new fox photos at the moment, though I've been getting nightly clips on the trail cam. There are definitely two foxes. The one with the kink in the tail is the more regular visitor, plus there's a second with a shortish brush (though working out quite what has happened to it is difficult from the fleeting video clips). Visits tend to be quite late, rarely earlier than 11.00pm and often closer to 3.00 or 4.00 in the morning. I'll attempt to get real photos soon and will edit more of the video together over the next couple of days.<\/p>\n

There are more shots from today in my Pulborough Brooks<\/a> album. They start about two thirds down with the first shot of the wigeon<\/a>.
\"Nature<\/a><\/span>
Camera note: all shots – except the adder – taken with the EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens. The adder was photographed with the Sigma 105mm F2.8 EX DG macro, mainly on manual focus to get through the undergrowth and stabilized with the Manfrotto 685B Neotec monopod.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[980,427,989],"tags":[33,450,1178],"class_list":["post-1341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds-2","category-snake","category-water-birds-birds-2","tag-birds","tag-pulborough-brooks","tag-snake","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}