Dungeness Nature Reserve

The murky conditions continued for much of Saturday, so we decided to do a bit of bird watching at the RSPB Nature Reserve in Dungeness.  I don't often suffer from "lens envy", but bird photography is one of those occasions where bigger is definitely better - especially when one's subjects are on the opposite shore of a large gravel pit!

First, the nuclear power station which forms a truly romantic backdrop to the nature reserve.

The grebes came relatively close to the hide, but the more interesting birds - such as the great white egrets - were miles away.  The sequence below is cropped very tightly, but gives some idea of the quality of the 70-200/2.8L IS mkII with a 1.4x mkIII converter.

The only other beasties which ventured close to the hide were a couple of dragonflies.  Why is it that, whenever one manages to capture these superb insects in such a way that they're nicely sharp, the background is always rubbish?

[Later note:  I'd originally thought these were Emperors, but a Wise Man has just informed me that they are actually Migrant Hawkers.  Even having looked at some reference images, I still find it difficult to tell them apart from their profile view.]

I always marvel at the way dragonflies tuck their "undercarriage" out of the way when flying.  Amazing creatures.

Damsels and Dragons

As has probably been obvious, blog posts have dried up over the past three weeks as I've been away on holiday.  The destination (Outer Hebrides) was technologically challenged, although I soon became used to having neither a phone signal nor an Internet connection.  This, combined with the fact that everything is closed on a Sunday, meant it was just like stepping back into childhood.

I'll get round to processing the Hebrides pictures at some point, but in the meantime here are a few images from today's Camera Club outing to the dragonfly pools at Burwash Manor Farm.  Stationary beasties were relatively straightforward, but their flying cousins were certainly more of a challenge.  A significant amount of practice will be required to perfect my technique, I suspect, but I did manage to get a few which were reasonably composed and acceptably sharp.

First some damselflies on sticks.  Easy does it, to start off with...

Then a couple of damselfly pairs mating on the wing.

The next three are Common Darter pairs, I believe, which were busy egg-laying.  I particularly like the one of the dragonflies surrounded by damsels.

There were a pair of Emperors patrolling the pond, but they were difficult to catch because of their fast pace and erratic movement.  It was only when I processed the pictures that I could see that at least one of the dragonflies had badly damaged wings.

Having exhausted myself attempting (and, usually, failing) to photograph the dragonflies, it seemed sensible to go for larger, slower moving targets instead.  In other words, the good old fall-back of Homo photographicus.  Here are Richard, Ann and Mike doing their stuff.

 Ok, so the final picture isn't strictly Homo photographicus.  In fact, I don't even think the animal in question is a member of Cambridge Camera Club.  Given the hot conditions, however, it certainly had the right idea.  Happy as a pig in s***, in fact!

Normal service on the blog front will be resumed as soon as possible, so watch this space.