Black and Red

Sunday 27th February saw us heading off into the moors in search of Grouse, to be more specific Black Grouse.

The day started well with reasonable light but as we got closer to the moors that all changed and as usual for us the light vanished and the rain appeared!

Our first notable encounter were five stunning Roe deer feeding not far from the road behind a wall.

My next find was a stunning Golden Plover (actually two Golden Plovers) but I only managed a distant image of one. Fabulous colours and rather good camo too.

As I drove along I spotted what I thought were 7 crows on a wall in the distance but when we had a better look Keith realised they were in fact Black Grouse! These were the only black grouse of the day but at least I got a record shot.

Onwards we headed into the moors and as expected we found plenty of Red Grouse at much closer distances to the car but this one was really calm and we followed him on foot for a few minutes - just enough time to get a couple of decent photos and not cause him any stress. His female waited down in a ditch for us to move off before she came back out again.

All in all we had a good day especially considering the fact it rained most of the time.

Some day we will find some sunshine!

Lightroom

I visited Lindisfarne on the 12th February with my pal Keith Reeder.

I've already posted a few of my many really good (in my opinion) bird images but I also played about with the landscapes while out and about.

The below was taken with my 100-400L IS USM lens on the 50D. When I first looked at it I nearly put them all straight into the recycle bin as they lacked contrast and detail but I didn't and I decided to see if I could recover any details in Lightroom 3.3.

I've posted a before and after below - What do you lot think? I'm rather happy with the results but my monitor isn't calibrated yet so it might be a bit off!

A few more from last weekends outing

Having spent a little time processing some images from last Saturdays outing with Keith

I've got a few more images to share with you all. These aren't the best quality but I liked them.

The light was dropping off fast and give off a lovely warm glow however it doesn't really suit the images in my opinion.

Godwits, Sanderling and Pale Bellied Brent Geese

Headed out to Holy Island this morning in horrible weather but relying on the forecasters saying bright spells by midday.

When we arrived the weather was far from good with very little light, no where near enough for the camera so we headed off into the dunes to look for SEO's. No sign of SEO's apart from a couple of fresh owl pellets. We continued on till we got onto the sands where we found several godwits and other waders unfortunatley they were very easily spooked and just not willing to play.

We continued onwards towards the Lough hide were Keith spotted the pale bellied brent geese in the field just behind the hide. (We guessed at around 500 of them.).

After covering most of the populated end of the island we decided to call it a day and headed back to our car without getting many pictures.

On the way back I decided to try a couple of sandy places I know of as the sun had broken through the clouds. All the images I managed are very poor due to bad exposure (my fault!)

I've never know godwits be so tame as they were today. Great fun to photograph.

Hope you enjoy.