Purple Heron at Marazion Marsh

Marazion Marsh had one of its rarer visitors in the late afternoon sunshine yesterday,  It was a large mature purple Heron that  moved about in the treeline adjacent to the railway line for quite a while before dropping down into maze of reed beds never to be seen again..........

  

The distance across the reserve to these trees is a challenge for any focal length of lens so the quality of images captured is not the best  but it is always good to see such a fine example of this rare Marsh visitor.

Today just flew bye

As with all wildlife photography your chosen subject rarely performs as predicted or expected and today was a good example,  The Purple Heron at Sett bridge, Ruan Lanihorne has been foraging in an area of marsh grasses just above the bridge for the last two weeks,  I took Peter Tonkin along this morning feeling reasonable confident that he would have a good photo opportunity,  After about an hour and a half the heron flew down the Fal river from the north over the bridge and kept on heading south down the Widening estuary, Charming !!  but at least I got a flight shot out of our visit.

We decided to move on to Tehidy Country Park and try our luck with the Kingfisher which showed twice,  It flew straight through the car park pond and straight on to the golf coarse pond the first time  and stopped just long enough for peter to grab a couple of shots on the second and then flew off leaving me with just another flight shot

Later a Swan flew over looking to land on the main pond,   It banked around to do so and then as I was ready for a nice water landing it decided against it and flew back in the direction it had come from leaving me with.............!

A male chaffinch flew in looking for hand outs, It didn't like what was on offer and flew off  once again leaving me with just ..................!

One of the mature Moorhen was perched in a tree high above the waterline enjoying the warmth of the sun,  I moved in a little to improve composition but was still a good distance from it and you guessed it   The bird was away in a frenzied flurry of flapping wings never to be seen again,

I framed up on a couple of happy young mums walking their toddlers around the pond,  Decided against it and went home !!

Ruan Lanihorne

I went to pastures new early AM today looking for the Purple Heron which has been regularly reported on the CBSPS sightings page over the last week or so,  On arrival I went straight into a first for this year with a juvenile male Fallow Deer feeding along the river banks, excellent!  It took me a while to spot the Purple Heron which never came clear of the long grasses and reeds so it became a game of hide and seek for a couple of hours but I did eventually get some reasonably clear shots and finished up with a couple of shots of  the Heron predating on a probable Palmate Newt,  Canada Geese flew over in abundance including one totally white individual which I was surprised to see and to slow to get my lens on to it,  I finished my morning off with a few shots of a Kingfisher before it finally flew off up the river to complete what had been a very interesting morning at a very pleasant estuary setting,