Opportunities to go birding have been somewhat limited since I twitched the Indigo Bunting, see here, some 16 days ago. We have had our two oldest grandchildren to stay for most of half-term while their parents were busy with work. They are very well behaved and a delight to be with and look after so its always a pleasure to have them. The Landover has been playing up again, I’m starting to feel that its past its use by date, and we are still waiting for our dog, Loki, to have the staples removed from his foot wound. So when Carolyn kindly said she would look after everyone on Saturday if I wanted to do some birding I jumped at the chance and shot over to the nature reserve at RSPB Ouse Fen, a reserve that I have rather strangely never visited before.
Ouse Fen is a joint project between the RSPB and construction company Hanson UK, and together they are working to transform a massive quarry into a haven for wildlife. It’s a wetland site, with pools and wet grassland and a reedbed that, at 460 hectares, will eventually be the largest in the UK. To put this into perspective this area equates to approximately one thousand one hundred football pitches!
On arrival the share scale of the project was obvious. Beyond the substantial area already maturing into wetland under the RSPB stewardship large working gravel pits stretched for pretty much as far as the eye can see. The star attraction for me was a rare Great Reed Warbler that had been present for a few days. The Warbler was located close to a viewing mound over a reed bed some 10 minutes’ walk from the car park. The warbler was not showing when I arrived but was hammering out its unmistakable song from somewhere deep in the reeds.
The Great Reed Warbler rates as a 2-star rarity in the Colins bird bible which equates to one or a few annual records. It resembles our common Reed Warbler but is much larger with a noticeably larger head, heavy bill with a dark tip, and a broad, pale eyebrow. They breed throughout mainland Europe and migrate to sub-Saharan Africa to over winter. The loud gruff croaking song carries a long way and is quite distinctive from the common Reed Warblers out of key scratchy rant.
After a few minutes a fellow birder announced that he had the warbler in his scope and kindly allowed me to have a look at what was my fourth UK Great Reed Warbler. It was quite windy but our songster was determined to hammer out his loud gruff song while hanging on precariously to the reeds as they swayed from side to side. The wind gave him a slightly dishevelled look and this together with his wide bright orange gape and rough croaking song gave him the appearance of an avian punk rocker.
The reeds swaying from side to side made photography challenging. I was using my now standard weapon of choice, my Cannon 500mm f4 lens with x2 converter on my tripod mounted Cannon R5. With a shutter speed set at a minimum of 1/1000 second at f8 I allowed the ISO speed to be auto selected. This resulted in speeds around ISO 1000 + which, together with the inevitable large crop factor required, is where the low noise large area sensor on the wonderful R5 comes into its own. I shot a memory card full of picks with the R5 bursting at its highest frame rate. It was then a matter of going through the resultant large number of pictures to find a few views unobscured by intervening reeds.
For those interested in such things the images of the Great Reed Warbler presented in this blog were shot in RAW with primary processing in Adobe Lightroom using the new so called AI noise reduction feature to reduce the grain of these highly cropped images. A small amount of secondary processing in Topaz sharpen was also used by launching this app from within Lightroom.
After a quick sandwich lunch back at the car I spent a chilled out and relaxed couple of hours exploring the rest of the reserve. Pairs of Bitterns were making feeding visits to nest deep in the reeds where presumably hungry youngsters waited. I spent some time sat at a viewpoint bench listening to Reed and Sedge Warblers and watching a beautiful Marsh Harrier hunting back and forth over the reed bed.
Thank you to Hanson and the RSPB for creating such a wonderful wildlife haven, I certainly hope to visit again soon!
Great photos Jim! Hope you're doing well
ReplyDeleteCheers Adam - all we'll this end thanks!
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