Friday 16 November 2012

Big Dipper

Having got distracted by the showy Otters last week, I didn't manage to get any photographs of the Black-bellied Dipper and it was only seen briefly a few times after that so I thought my chance had gone.  Yesterday afternoon, it reappeared and was well twitched by several BTO folk during their coffee break, but as I didn't have my big lens with me having walked in to work, I didn't go so instead thought I'd try today instead.
As I pulled up this morning a forlorn looking birder was just leaving so I assumed the bird wasn't around, but as soon as I glanced over the bridge, the Dipper flew up and along under the bridge.  I went back to the car to get the camera and sure enough, it was still present on the other side of the bridge and showed extremely well, and thankfully the river has dropped a bit since last week and so there are some stones for it to feed from in true Dipper style.  Typically though this morning is very gloomy and the bird insists on sitting in the shade of the bridge so even on high ISO setting, the best shutter speeds are 1/40th of a second, but it does sit still long enough to get something fairly sharp and will hopefully stick around until nicer weather so I can get some better shots.


The fact it stays in one place for long periods means I was even able to get some video footage using the D300s....



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