Marazion Starling Roost

I revisited Marazion marsh at dawn today keen to witness one of nature's local seasonal wonders  'A Starling Roost',  Cloud formations created a colourful and dramatic dawn as I waited for the Starlings to exit their roost on the Marsh reed beds, Ten minutes before sunrise In was like some one had fired a starting pistol as thirty thousand Starling poured into the sky to depart to the east and the west. It was all over in just a few minutes and I was the sole Spectator to this mornings event,  There was a couple of Dog Walkers on the beach but they looked far to involved in their own 'Poo Bag' filling competition to have even noticed. I think the lady was winning !!

Chapel Carn Brea

It was a fine sunny afternoon with little to no wind yesterday,  I took a trip up to Chapel Carn Brea in the company of Peter Tonkin looking for Birds of Prey,  It is very close to Lands End Airport and the first big bird we saw was the colourful twin engine Skybus featured below,

We soon had sight of a female Merlin that seemed to be going somewhere in a hurry, It was shortly followed by a more leisurely female Kestrel that hovered gracefully above us until it was rudely interrupted by a feisty Skylark that was determined to evict it,

I tracked the skylark back on to a hedgerow where it posed quite nicely showing off its identifiable crest and extended rear toes, Bored with posing it dropped into a very muddy and flooded tractor tyre track intent on taking a bath but Peter Tonkin surprisingly beat him to it throwing himself horizontally into the mud with great gusto,  By the time I managed to pull him out excluding his boots he resembled and smelt like an old duck pond!!  I Hadn't realised that he had a fetish for mud but I guess it is each to their own,  I kept upwind of him after that,

As the sun headed for the distant horizon over the sea I picked a grassy route along Cornish stone walls back to the car park trying to avoid any more mud slicks incidents with Peter and was presented with this nice Buzzard take-off sequence and a cheeky male Stonechat on the way,

The setting sun had turned the calm sea to a shimmering gold creating a lovely backdrop for a silhouetted image of the Longships Lighthouse which was around six kilometres away and looking far more peaceful than it did a week ago during Storm Brian.

Kennell Vale Dipper

I revisited Kennell Vale again today looking for Dipper sightings,  It had been eight months since I last saw any here but today was to be the day,  I moved upstream from the lower stone bridge that had proved successful back in March checking all the nooks and crannies as I went, I saw a flash of wings move into one of the dark wheel pits of one of the derelict gunpowder mills, Waited quietly at a fair distance and eventually out popped a lovely Dipper to begin foraging in one of the many waterfalls and eddies,  I soon realised that I was on the wrong side of the river working against the bright sunlight that was filtering through the trees so I retraced my steps back to the stone bridge and progressed back up on the right side and was pleased to see that the bird was still foraging in the same location,  The Dipper appeared quite successful at finding several nymph prey under the rushing waters and I eventually achieved the last two images in this blog showing the behaviour of the dipper with prey which it took to a single half submerged stone each time and beat the nymph against it to remove twigs and debris that it had collected and attached to its body as camouflage and protection,  It was then quickly dispatched by the Dipper. I also posted a montage of three images showing the Dipper moving up through the waterfalls

Stithians Reservoir yesterday

The feeding station at Stithians Reservoir was a bit like Noah's Ark yesterday morning with all the birds coming along two by two,  First came the female Greater Spotted Woodpecker closely followed by her mate,  They spent around twenty minutes on the feeders with several pairs of Great tits and bluetits fearlessly diving in between them to claim their share of the bounty,  When the woodpeckers finally left leaving me with plenty or single and pair images a fine pair of colourful Greenfinches flew in to compete with several Goldfinches for perch position on the seed feeders,  Two pairs of Coaltits joined in to the feast but these feisty birds seemed to spend more time seeing each other off than feeding and finally three and a half pairs of Chaffinch arrived without any particular preference on food choice they flew in to which ever feeder was vacant,  Feeding stations might not be every photographers choice of location but they do present the opportunity to spend more time with any given subject and perhaps the secret of success is in catching them before or after they feed so as to exclude the unattractive feeders

Storm 'Brian' over the Longships

Storm 'Brian'  slammed into the Longships during the early hours of this morning with wind gusts of over 60mph and is forecast to remain over 50mph for the rest of the day,  The Longships and its prominent lighthouse is around one and a half miles west of Lands End so it took the full force of the high seas and southwest to westerly winds,  To give scale to pictures below the lighthouse is 106feet to the Helicopter landing pad, It sits on a levelled rock base that can be anything up to forty foot above the tide line so waves that break above the lighthouse are in the range of about one hundred and fifty feet,  Light levels were quite poor around 8AM  but the sun fought its way through the passing clouds at 9.30 AM to provide a few good opportunities before the tide dropped to low.

Female Kingfisher portraits

Having recently replaced my remote shutter release assembly I wanted to check out the new one for working distance so off I went early AM to Millpool to use the assembly to work at a distance of around 75m from a fishing post used by a very shy female Kingfisher,  Selection of camera and lens settings all need careful preset consideration and in this case with low light levels and shadows I set the camera tripod at the closest possible working distance of around 10m from the post, Added a 1.4 converter to my 500mm f4 lens for full frame images, Camera settings were F5.6,  1250th sec and Auto ISO set to a max of ISO 6400  I also used -2/3rds of a stop compensation to  keep shutter speeds high while accepting a little more noise from the ISO within the images,  The female Kingfisher is not resident at Millpool but shows up on around 20% of the occasions that I work in this area and then its a question  of which tree stump that she selects to fish from,  Today was a good one as she turned up  on my selected stump within ten minutes of my arrival,  No fish caught on this occasion but a photogenic kingfisher portrait taken this close will on most occasions produce a few dramatic images without props. I was pleased with the portraits images posted below and glad to see that all was well with my new remote shutter assembly,  Happy Days !!

Wash and brush up

As I watched a female Mute Swan feeding yesterday afternoon it suddenly seemed to go into a bit of a frenzy, It turned itself completely upside down at one stag and when righted again it thrashed around all over the place, but all of this turned out to be just the 'Will to Wash' She used her head like an elongated sponge to remove excess water before moving to the shoreline,  'Wash over!'

It was now time for 'Brush Up' and her beak came into play to preen all her chest and flight feathers and the top of her head made an excellent brush for her back,

Well that's the job done and this extremely clean female was now ready to go back to feeding again, 'A women's work is never done'

Marazion Marsh today

I made an early visit to longrock again this morning looking for mating Roe deer images but oh dear, no Deer,  I decided to walk the short distance on to Marazion Marsh and as I progressed along Newtown lane I was passed by around ten thousand noisy starlings exiting the marsh roost and no more than a minute later they passed by again flying in the opposite direction to disappear over the hills of Marazion.

I visited Millpool looking for kingfishers but no joy here either but I did disturb a cock Ringneck Pheasant that had a right good shout about it all as he backed away,

I went home for an early lunch and to recharge camera batteries and my tea flask, checked out the weather and wind direction and decided to return to Marazion marsh for the afternoon to try my luck looking for a so far this winter non existent bittern.  It remained so but winter visitors included Garganey and gadwall and I was a little surprised to see a pair of resident mallards mate on several occasions, I'm not sure if they were mating very late or very early but the male mallard seemed to be quite happy with the situation anyway