On Friday I went for a birding run, as I am wont to do. As I didn't have much time I decided to run round the birdless remains of my patch though without the floods there's precious little to see there. I have recently discovered though that the river can provide some sort of habitat for returning waders and indeed on Thursday there were a couple of common sandpipers and a little egret along the river shore. Today there was just one common sandpiper remaining but it seemed to have got used to the continual presence of walkers and boats in the area as it was very confiding. With a bit of crawling along the ground on my stomach I was able to get to within about 5 yards of the bird and even though I only had my point & shoot camera (a Panasonic Lumix DCM-TZ7) it's 12x optical zoom meant that I was able to get in there reasonably well. The bird even obliged by sitting very still for a few minutes so I didn't have to contend with its usual constant movement and bobbing tail which usually blurs the best of photographic attempts. These are definitely the best common sandpiper shots I've taken to date even though there wasn't much light. Just think how good they would have been had I had a proper DSLR.
You can click to enlarge this shot...
...and this one.
I really like waders, I don't quite know why but they're one of my favourite type of bird so it was fantastic to get so close to such a beautiful bird.
1 comment:
I can completely see why Sandpiper are one of your favourite birds. I'm a big fan of waders too (and can't wait for the migrants to return to NZ this spring.)
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