{"id":1818,"date":"2011-01-12T23:01:07","date_gmt":"2011-01-12T23:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1818"},"modified":"2013-11-09T21:26:41","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T21:26:41","slug":"a-surprise-on-the-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/a-surprise-on-the-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"A surprise on the lake"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Despite the gloom I headed over to Regent's Park at lunchtime. The light was awful, and the paths muddy. To be fair, it wasn't raining and nor was it especially cold. I entered the park and was looking around some of the favoured rat haunts (without success) when a flock of greylags flew overhead.
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The sight of the geese encouraged me to head over to the lake (as though I need encouragement!). Anyway, I'm glad I did. It was not good weather for photography and I played around with camera settings while photographing more 'muddy ducks', finally settling for an ISO of either 800 or 1000 and a wide aperture. Even so, I struggled to get a shutter speed worthy of the name. I'd only taken a handful of test shots when I caught a glimpse in the distance of a bird descending to the water. I was fairly sure what it was, and it was the first time I'd seen one in the park. <\/p>\n

This is what I'd seen.
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Now I'm familiar with the cormorants over at London Bridge<\/a> where the river provides good feeding, but I suspect there is precious little to sustain a cormorant in these small lakes. It didn't catch anything while I was watching, despite repeated dives.
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Watching the cormorant provided an interesting contrast with another of the diving birds. The cormorant always re-emerges within a relatively short distance of the dive point. This makes it reasonably easy to follow them with the camera, even when they spend a good deal of time below the surface. You can plant yourself in a good spot and fire away. Great crested grebes, on the other hand seem to have a quite different technique. I watched this one as it paddled and dived.
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And then had to search for it. It emerged about 30 yards downstream. It did this consistently, but helpfully heading in the direction I needed to go.
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No new fox photos tonight, although the trail cam has revealed that once again we have a limping fox. It was only on camera briefly, but it appears to have injured a hind leg. As ever, it seemed perfectly mobile despite the injury. I'd like to see it close up, but I suspect that as with nearly all such injuries it will heal by itself soon enough. <\/p>\n

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\"Nature<\/a><\/span>
Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 40D and EF 200mm f\/2.8L II USM.<\/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":[4,989],"tags":[449,1128,498,519],"class_list":["post-1818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foxes","category-water-birds-birds-2","tag-cormorant","tag-fox","tag-geese","tag-grebe","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