I have been spending some time at Pennington Flash Country Park near Leigh. This is an area of woodland and scrub, with a variety of ponds caused by subsidence after a long history of coal mining.
I was testing my new D200 with my 300mm f/4 AF-S by sitting in the Bunting hide, which has a large number of bird tables and other feeders allowing very close views of a variety of birds.
Song thrush
Dunnock (or hedge sparrow)
Larger birds visit too, including mallard, moorhen, magpies, wood pigeons and this handsome pheasant (who obviously had a narrow escape from whatever damaged his tail).
The hardest birds to photograph were the tit family - they rarely stay still. I was lucky to get these shots as one paused on a perch before grabbing a seed to take away.
The guy next to me said it was a marsh tit and I was too polite to disagree, although the willow tit and the marsh tit are very difficult to distinguish. I'm not really a bird expert, but on looking at these photos and checking the literature, I think this is a willow tit - confirmation or correction would be appreciated.
Long-tailed tits are the smallest and most active of all, they don't often come to feeders, but this little chap took an interest in the last piece of fat in the closest feeder.
I was using the 100 ISO setting, which obviously causes some difficulties and a relatively high failure rate due to low shutter speeds, but I like the quality of the images, most of these are moderately cropped.
Alan
I was testing my new D200 with my 300mm f/4 AF-S by sitting in the Bunting hide, which has a large number of bird tables and other feeders allowing very close views of a variety of birds.
Song thrush
Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
Dunnock (or hedge sparrow)
Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
Larger birds visit too, including mallard, moorhen, magpies, wood pigeons and this handsome pheasant (who obviously had a narrow escape from whatever damaged his tail).
Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
The hardest birds to photograph were the tit family - they rarely stay still. I was lucky to get these shots as one paused on a perch before grabbing a seed to take away.
Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
The guy next to me said it was a marsh tit and I was too polite to disagree, although the willow tit and the marsh tit are very difficult to distinguish. I'm not really a bird expert, but on looking at these photos and checking the literature, I think this is a willow tit - confirmation or correction would be appreciated.
Long-tailed tits are the smallest and most active of all, they don't often come to feeders, but this little chap took an interest in the last piece of fat in the closest feeder.
Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
I was using the 100 ISO setting, which obviously causes some difficulties and a relatively high failure rate due to low shutter speeds, but I like the quality of the images, most of these are moderately cropped.
Alan
