The bird list for the gravel pits for the day included 2 snipe, 23 gadwall, 4 tufted duck, 4 great crested grebe, 4 little grebe, 1 little egret, 1 grey heron, 140+ black-headed gulls, 1 herring gull, 70+ coot, 30+ jackdaws, 1+ moorhen, 7 swans inc. 3 immature, 1 (heard) green woodpecker,
After I attended a Kent Playing Fields meeting on behalf of the Parish, I got down to the Gravel Pits at about 4:30 in the afternoon, with the light already fading. as I crossed the first causeway, to my intense surprise I put up two Common Snipe, which no-one seems to have recorded on the Kent Ornithological website this autumn yet. This follows the single I put up on Ham Marshes last Sunday!
I did manage to get some photos but they were very poor really - I must try the tripod! Anyway here is a Great Crested Grebe, Podiceps cristatus , one of a pair quite close to the scoping point I generally use. One of the difficulties was I set the camera poorly, with exposure priority, and any advantage I might have got from a high ISO number was lost due to tiny aperture and an over-long exposure time! The bird itself is great, still retaining a slight crest and also some of the warm colouration from the summer, which now seems some time ago!
These pictures are slightly better, now that I got the exposure programme right! Also I was resting the camera on a support to reduce camera shake, and I think I could reduce the ISO number if I tried to use a support or tripod more often. Reducing the ISO number should then reduce the "noise" on the images.
This is also a slightly better shot of a Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, when again I got the wider aperture and therefore a faster exposure time!
After I attended a Kent Playing Fields meeting on behalf of the Parish, I got down to the Gravel Pits at about 4:30 in the afternoon, with the light already fading. as I crossed the first causeway, to my intense surprise I put up two Common Snipe, which no-one seems to have recorded on the Kent Ornithological website this autumn yet. This follows the single I put up on Ham Marshes last Sunday!
I did manage to get some photos but they were very poor really - I must try the tripod! Anyway here is a Great Crested Grebe, Podiceps cristatus , one of a pair quite close to the scoping point I generally use. One of the difficulties was I set the camera poorly, with exposure priority, and any advantage I might have got from a high ISO number was lost due to tiny aperture and an over-long exposure time! The bird itself is great, still retaining a slight crest and also some of the warm colouration from the summer, which now seems some time ago!
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