Monday, March 29, 2010

You Dancing?

At present there seem to be lots of Great Crested Grebes posing nicely for photos showing their famous weed dance. I've seen it a few times - mostly at quite long distance, although once in my fishing days I had a good view at a small reservoir near Warrington. In terms of pictures the smaller the water the better really, as they seem to me to tend to be a bit shy.
After a morning watching the adders in the Forest I moved on to a spot Chris G had mentioned, to see if I could get any views of the grebes, dancing or not. Well it turned out not, but I did get some nice views. As this pair were already nest building and, if you look closely, mating (see below) it may be that they got their bonding out of the way a while ago. Or maybe I just wasn't there at the right time. Still I'm not grumbling, as these are miles and away the best shots of great crested footy arses (for anyone who's been with me from the beginning of the blog!) I've managed so far in my fledgling snappery.
These last few shots have an almost painterly quality. Relatively underexposed there seems to be some noise, as though the ISO setting was much higher than my standard 400.
To round a good day off I went to have a look at a long tailed tit's nest in the failing light. For the first time I used my new remote trigger for the camera, allowing me to sit well away from the nest, but still get some pre-focused shots. The low light means the quality is iffy, but the set-up worked as well as I could have hoped.
As always check the web albums for better quality views

1 comment:

kirstallcreatures said...

Lovely Great Crested Grebe shots, the Long Tailed Tit in the nest is fantastic, Linda