dkpw – Wicked Fire

I was out with the DarkStars on Monday in the sunny town of Peebles.

We ambled, gambolled and perspired (mostly me) along the banks of the Tweed in the town’s park, when Mrs. Darkstar spotted a large Grey Heron coming towards us. We were all armed with cameras, but by the time we managed to frame the bird, it was past us and heading towards the upper branches of a pine tree on the far shore. Even at maximum zoom, it was a tiny, grey, indistinct smudge in my viewfinder.

Mrs. Darkstar laughed cruelly at our catching only the arse end of the bird. Surely this mockery, was a small token of revenge for the hours she’s been forced to endure birding in the biting wind, rain, sleet and darkness each August in Lochinver for the last 10 years. She may be justified…

However, but in a moment all that was forgotten, as a joyous cry arose – as did the heron. It obligingly flew directly over-head and with only nano-seconds available I fired off a burst from the trusty Canon. I manged to get this shot which although over-exposed, which normally happens when you shoot the sky, is in focus.

Sadly I only had the 24-105 zoom on, the 200 would have been superb. Still I’m quite pleased with it. I need to work on my post production skills to get the best from the camera. It will be a labour of love.

Well, my experiments with my new camera and lenses continue. Yesterday lunchtime, I headed over to Ocean Terminal, next to the Britannia, where there are often interesting birds to see and sights to photograph.

Since I was last there, the renowned sculptor Anthony Gormley has installed part of his Water of Leith series at the end of a dilapidated pier. As you can see the figure is of a man, with his back to the shore, standing dispassionately staring across the firth towards Fife. It’s quite bleak, even on a bright day in August. Quite what it symbolises, I’m artistically literate enough to deduce.

The gulls, cormorants and other sea birds have already crowned him with much guano. Please click for a massively hi-res version.

I’ve been playing with my new camera and lenses and decided to try to snap some birds in flight. These first attempts could be sharper and my reactions could be faster. I also have to remember the old adage, “Film is cheap” which is especially true with a digital SLR having an in-built motor drive and a burst rate of 8 shots per second.

Next time I need to set the camera to be in shutter priority mode on a fast speed, not my usual aperture priority and then set the zoom to be in the correct IS (image stabilisation) mode. Still, I’m quite pleased with these, which show the grace of even common birds like the Black Headed and Herring Gulls, and without the help of the camera I would be taking photos of the sky, having missed the birds entirely.

Today was the last “real” day of my holiday as tomorrow would see me drive back home. So I went out on a high by visiting the fantastic birding experience that is Slimbridge Wildfowl & Wetland Trust.

This has a mixture of different habitats, acts as a reserve for native and foreign species and has hides looking out onto the Severn estuary. If you’re in that part of the world make sure you spend a day there.

Founded by the late Sir Peter Scott, the reserve is thriving and home to so many birds, which provided me with an excellent opportunity to test out my new camera and lens. I’ll not bore you with too many but here are a few of some of the characters I photographed during my six hours there. Pleas click the photos for a better view.

This Bewick’s Swan was extremely cheeky, and clearly expected me to provide him with some food.

This Mute Swan was eponymous and glided by without much expectation.

A tired flamingo, with a touch of red eye.

A pair of “cute” White Faced Whistling Ducks.

An aloof Bar Headed Goose ignores a plain and ordinary Greylag Goose as they pass.

A Ruddy Shelduck!

Good to see a Tufted Duck again, although this one’s tuft is rather spindly.

An ominous Rook looks on lugubriously.

A Marbled Teal lives up to its name.

A Demoiselle Crane has a micro-break from preening itself.

There were many, many more but I’ll put some more up later or on my gallery page.

I also spent some time in the hides over-looking the Severn Estuary and was rewarded by the sight of a Buzzard catching and eating a Wood Pigeon. The weather (rain) came and went but nonetheless it was great place to revisit.

I drove back to my hotel, via Gloucester and had a wee wander round the shops and the environs of Gloucester Cathedral. I preferred Norwich in general but the centre of Gloucester was very pleasant nonetheless.

I had an early night as I had a long drive back home, having read my camera’s until I was exhausted.

Today began with appalling weather. It pissed down non-stop, so I decided to go to Bristol for some shopping. I bought this.

and this.

Anyone want to buy an Omega Speedmaster?

In the afternoon, I wanted to try out my new camera and lens on some birds, and travelled to an RSPB reserve called Nagshead. My journey through the Forest of Dean was absolutely beautiful, it is a glorious part of the world but sadly I would have been better going to a pub called the Nags Head. Despite spending two hours in the reserve, I managed to see a Bullfinch, some Blue Tits and a Song Thrush. While these are all great birds, I suppose I was spoilt by all of the fantastic birds I’d seen in Norfolk and Suffolk. I was indeed the only person there and so I was visiting either at the wrong time of the day or the wrong part of the year. No matter it was a beautiful afternoon.

I drove back to the hotel, avoiding the sheep on the roads in the forest and relaxed as tomorrow was another visit to Slimbridge WWF Trust, where there would be more birds to photograph than I could dream about.

After a long lie in and a light brunch of bacon butties, we had a chat about what to do with our day. I casually asked Denis if he had played poker before? Only a couple of times was his answer.

Within moments, I’d installed PokerStars onto his computer and was in tutorial mode. Mr.King was a natural, picking it up very quickly. Four hours later, we recognised his addiction and I suggested that we give the poker a break and perhaps go for a spin in the car, maybe taking in one of the lesser RSPB reserves in the vicinity.

The sat nav took us to Surlingham Church Marsh which is a tiny reserve adjacent to Strumpshaw Fen. As we’d headed out in the middle of the afternoon and that it was in fact hotter than Hades, within moments I was a sweating blob. There was very little in the way of bird life, as they had sensibly taken shade from the heat and humidity.

However on the way round, Denis spotted something and said he thought it was an Egyptian Goose. That’s a pretty good official first spot. These apparently were introduced but have escaped and are now breeding in the wild in parts of East Anglia. Well they are definitely at Surlingham Church Marsh.

Further on, I heard a twittering and a fluttering and a flapping in the fauna near the path. The strange thing was that this bird seemed to want to be spotted and also was seeming to follow us. It did not fly off when I approached. Ah ha! A new spot. A quick referral in the Collins book and I found I was looking at a Sedge Warbler, with its clearly visible white eye stripe or Supercilium as we in the birding world call them.  Another new spot!

We decided to get out of the steam bath that was the great outdoors, and headed back to the secluded shade of Denis’ flat were cider and poker was the order of the evening, along with a fragrant selection of kebabs and burgers from the local kebab delivery man.

Birds, cider, poker and a large doner and chips. Who could want more?

Surprinsingly fresh after my many pints of cider, I hit the road in the direction of Minsmere on the Suffolk coast between Southwold and Adleburgh, home of Benjamin Britten.

This was my favourite reserve. The staff were very friendly and welcoming. It has a large variety of habitat and so I was able to spend most of the day here pottering around enjoying the cooler air on the coast and the birds!

I headed to the North hide and saw a good range of birds on the scrap in front of the hide and over the marshes and reeds flew some more Marsh Harriers, about three of them!

You can see the West Hide in the distance.

I took a trawl along the paths to the East Hide, having lunch on the dunes over-looking the North Sea. Luckily the showers held off, and then the sun came out and burned most of the cloud away.

There was some excellent birds still on the scrape including a family of Greylag geese who munched their way through a whole reed bed. The parents clearly knew to eat the younger leaves and shoots, while the juveniles went for anything green, regardless of how tough it was. Swallows and swifts played overhead and a Marsh Harrier (yawn – what another one) fluttered down into the reeds.

It was mid-afternoon and the only new spot of the day had been a Water Rail, so I decided to head back to visit the Bittern Hide which looked like a good place to see a more reedy environment, and then call it a day. The Bittern hide is a substantial affair and is maybe 30 feet high. It gives great views over the fen part of the reserve. From here we (I and the other birders) could see the Marsh Harriers going about their business.

I’d not been in the hide for maybe more than 10 minutes when the large Welsh chap to my right shouted “Bittern!” If you know nothing about birds, the Bittern is legendary. Basically it’s a large brown member of the Heron family, which lives in reed beds. It’s shy, stealthy and incredibly well camouflaged which means they are very difficult to see when they have landed. They are very rare, have a small population as they depend on reed beds. Adding to their mystique is the fact that the male, has a very strange, deep booming mating call. I’d heard one in Ham Wall near Glastonbury in March but like many, I’d never seen one, ’til now.

I was quick enough to see the bittern land in the reeds next to a dead tree. Amazingly it was no more than 30 feet in front of the hide. Every binocular, camera lens and scope was pointed at that clump of reeds hoping for a view of the bird in its natural environment, or possibly even hunting.

Then disaster.

Five minutes into BitternWatch, we in the hide could hear the stomping, laughing and yelling of a family with several young children running up the stairs. Nervous glances were exchanged over tightly held binoculars. Bang the door flew open and in ran two little girls talking loudly. Again, if you’re not familiar with the atmosphere in a hide, it’s not as quiet and reverential as a library but at the same time loud noisy children, are not entirely welcome, especially when one of Britain’s rarest birds is sitting 40 feet away and people like me have come from miles to see one. The parents were not immediately aware that their children had disturbed the assembled watchers. Fortunately they did not stay long, as there were no seats and the little girls had somewhere else to rush off to play. STOMP STOMP STOMP down the stairs went the noisy family.

Whether their arrival and departure had disturbed the bittern, we shall never know, but some 40 minutes later we were all rewarded by the sight of it lifting off from the reeds and flying past the front of the hide. Something like this.

I texted DarkStar, my news “Bittern!!!!!! He was so apoplectic with jealousy that he could only reply “Captase.” A second text arrived shortly, “I meant bastard.”  No, I think you meant SMUG bastard.

Very happy with the days birding, I drove back to Norwich to find Mr. King’s abode and look forward to an evening of substance abuse in this case cider and curry.

Having settled into Denis’ flat, we soon began drinking, chewing the fat and catching up on what the hell had happened to us in the last 12 years or so. Needless to say it was as if those years had not happened. The best way to seal a renewed friendship was of course by going out for a curry in one of Norwich’s favoured curry eateries. We walked to a nearby taxi rank passing the court buildings and Norwich Cathedral.

Another excellent day had ended.

I was up bright and early as there were several RSPB websites with my name on them. The attractions of this part of the world, apart from seeing Mr. King again, is that there are many RSPB reserves with a variety of habitats. These harbour birds I’ll never see in Scotland. So planning carefully, in Starbucks using their free wi-fi, I decided to start at the most distant reserve which for me was Titchwell Marsh on the furthest north coast of East Anglia’s bump between King’s Lynn and Cromer.

The sat nav took me there without issue, again proving its worth as some of these reserves are in out of the way spots and would be difficult to locate without local knowledge. I parked up and geared up only to be told by an apologetic lady volunteer that the main reserve was closed due to building work, I think they were repairing the fragile coastline after storm damage. I only made her feel worse by saying that I’d come from Edinburgh. The good news was that the Fen hide was open. I headed there past the feeders, hooching with birds, sadly all of the usual garden species, although it was good to see some Tree Sparrows.

In the fen hide I met a friendly couple from the Midlands who were clearly better kitted out than I. They had a spotting scope on a tripod, bins, digi-cameras with feck off huge lenses and were using their small digital camera to digi-scope. This means you take a digital photograph down the spotting scope. They showed me one of this big brown thing in a tree.

A MARSH HARRIER!!!!

That was a great new spot for me, and it soon flew closer to us and flitted about, before landing in the marshes.

Soon after, right in front of the hide, we (everyone in the hide) spotted a reed warbler darting in the reeds (what else) and climbing them with amazing agility. I was only at Titchwell Marsh for about two couple of hours, but the sight of the two new species made up for the disappointment of seeing but a fraction of the reserve.



Even in the morning, the heat and humidity, and all that greenery reminded me of The Nam. Luckily Charlie was not in the ville.

I decided to head for some of the reserves to the east of Norwich on the edge of the Broads and took a delightful run in the car the long way around the north Norfolk coast to Cromer and then south to Strumpshaw Fen. This is non-coastal and more typical of what I thought the Broads would look like.

Arriving in the early afternoon, it was now even hotter than the Nam. I recklessly decided on the longer walk which is about 3 miles round.

There were some good birds, and I again spotted a Marsh Harrier this time even closer than at Titchwell Marsh. They are magnificent birds, and can be distinguished by the golden crown to their head. The other good spots were an egret and a common tern.

It was while walking around the reserve, that I began to appreciate that in this part of the world, the land is often below the water. I turned to my left and saw a boat sailing past!

I was hideously sweaty after this walk in 25 degrees and when I returned to the car, saw that I had missed a call from Mr. King. Back at the hotel, I had a good soak in the bath, so as to avoid the shower head spraying the entire bathroom with water as it had done the day before, and dressed to meet Denis and his lads for the first time in over a decade.

The Golden Star came to the rescue for refreshing Aspall’s cider and it also did food. Mr. King arrived shortly afterwards and the years had been kind to him. I recognised him immediately although Jake and Max had grown. Reaching my stage in life, affords me the opportunity to tease the young, which I did by reminding them, that the last time I had seen them, they were sharing a bath. We had an excellent evening of chat, laughs, cider, burgers for the Kings and I had some delicious pork, black pudding with mustard mash and cabbage. The lads were clearly fun, well adjusted and sensible, unlike their father. He can take credit for them!

I nearly had too much cider that evening, and so was helped out by Max, for whom this was clearly not his first taste of the noble drink. I staggered the 100 yards to the hotel, agreeing that I would meet up with Denis tomorrow evning after some more birding adventures. Hic.