8th Dec. 2020
A gloomy and slightly foggy morning temperatures not much more than four degrees Centigrade. I took a few shot of the Seasalter beach showing how the tide is changing the shoreline and scouring away the stones etc by about two and a half feet in just over a year, the chalet owners trying to hold back the inevitable.
Moving onto the S.Swale LNR it was rather quiet birdwise, the 4-5 stonechats that were present 4 days ago had disappeared, maybe the cold weather or maybe they just lay low because when it warms up I bet they will be there again. The brent flock (c.750) was on one field and further along near the white post the now 23 whitefronts were still present with a dozen more brents.
Apart from 5-6 skylarks I came across 3 meadow pipits coming up out of the grass which landed on the fence wire protecting the reedbed, one here showing a ring on its leg.
The white-fronted geese were settled in the next field and already having photos I thought I would give my Olympus camera an image stabilizer test using the 300mm F4 and see what the lowest shutter speed was that I could hold steady. Starting at a 1/125sec I managed to get the shutter speed down to 1/10th sec handheld, (the lens equivalent to 600mm on full frame) before there was blur in the image. Quite amazing I thought.
A look over the seawall revealed lots of common seals on the sands, 135 I counted and lots of pups.
The mudflats were almost deserted except for a few waders on the very tidal edge but I did see 35 shelduck, their numbers now picking up.
2 comments:
Nice to see you blogging again Mike. A few good birds on your patch of late. Take care.
Thanks Marc, just killing some time thought about the Blog again so might try to keep it up.
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