I title it that because watching the Red Crested Pochards put me in mind of a load of soldiers on parade. In one video below the males are all bobbing their beaks in what must be some kind of mating courtship .. thing?
I was not expecting to see these and annoyingly and due to the pain and my health condition I went out without my very best lens.
I had gone out because it was supposed to be sunny all afternoon. It was sunny for about three minutes in total .. thank you yet again, weather people! I had intended to got artistic and bokeh shots of flowers for my other digital photography blog, as I had the day before. Though admittedly it is somewhat early in the year and there is not a lot about. Some wild violets were seen but not very good condition and there were some Daffodils, Hyacinths and some trees with white blossom. But the weather was shit and dull and I stumbled across these Red Crested Pochards.
I need to open up the aperture a little with this lens in future for birds.. an f1.4. This was also at Finsbury Park in London.
For two days in a row I visited the Walthamstow Wetlands. I was there yesterday.
Well what a day?!
The weather men got it wrong for the umpteenth time recently for London, no snow the other Thursday after they said it was. The day before this day it was supposed to rain around 3pm to 4pm and barely spat. This day was supposed to be partly sunny fro midday to 5pm with no rai at all! Take a wild guess at what happened?! It rained and transitioned from fairly heavy to light and the sun did come out .. eventually. Around the closing time of the place we were in which is 4pm.
Tens of millions on a weather computer a couple years back? Stop .. just stop.
Anyhoo we waited by the section which was said to have Reed Buntings and a Little Bunting among them. Got hatting to e nice bunch of chaps while there, one dedicated soul was a Scot who had come down from Warrington of all places.
Now I was convinced I had the Little Bunting on film and pictures a dozen times .. but ..
I was not familiar with what young and hen Reed Buntings looked like nor familiar with the same for the Little Bunting. A chestnut coloured face was all I had to go on.
I also still do not possess my birding lens, the 70-400mm Sony f4!
At the end someone pointed out the Little Bunting while it was close to us and feeding. I spotted what they were referring to and though 'oh .. I have filmed that several ties' and was happy. Well as it turns out it was not the Little Bunting and an immature male Reed Bunting.
After going through the videos and the photos I had managed to get one of each of the Little Bunting so was not a complete disaster. Nor did the Sony A99 II and its 70-2mm f2.8 and 1.4 Teleconverter get wet for nothing.
Little Bunting in the video below on the right
What I believe to be an immature Male Reed Bunting ..
We had many days of snowing and freezing temperatures which was days on end of misery which ended up a day of getting some very sad and distressing news. It was pretty bad and still is .. something else for my corruption blog in time I guess?
I was about fit to burst .. or throw myself under a bus and had to get out. My brother said he wanted to go to a place where a Little Bunting had been spotted. He had also said there were reports of Scaup and Goldeneye ducks and at first I decided I was not going. But then I changed my mind ..
I did decide to only take my Nikon P900 .. but I am going back today with the Sony A99 II and a couple lenses and a monopod!
This is why ..
There was indeed a Scaup ..
You can see a higher resolution picture and others on my Flickr account..
There were also Linnets .. though when they flew away we could have sworn we see a greenish yellow colour and thought they were Siskins .. until we got back and took one look at the pictures ..
