Brandon Marsh 1st Aug

Up early again at 5 am to meet my friend Ken at Brandon. I have been wanting to get some nice pictures of the king fisher now for sometime and Ken said he would show me around. The weather wasn't great but it was at least dry.

Upon arrival at the hide there was only one other person so we got set up nearlist to the perch. Ken lent me his 500mm F4 :) so I could hopefully nail some good pictures.

It was about a hour before the first fly by sighting and then one perched.
This was the closest I had been to a kingfisher so I was so excited and just kept taking shot after shot.

During the next hour the light started to improve and more kingfishers arrived.
At one point there was 3 king fishers sitting on one perch, this was a great sight to see.
As the time went on Ken said I had better "fill my boots with pics" as they would be leaving soon, sure enough a few minutes later they had all gone.

So all in all a great morning, arrived at 6am and left at 10am with over 200 shots of the kingfisher's. I will be visiting Brandon again in the near future.

Skomer Island 3rd to 5th July

I know this is a little late posting but it has taken me weeks to go through all the photo's. This was my first visit to Skomer and I loved every minute of it.

During the 3 days spent there I saw a lot of firsts for me including:
Little owl
Short eared owl
Linnet
Choughs
Razzorbill
Shearwaters
And of course hundreds of puffins.

As we had only three days on the island I decided to make the most of my time which meant leaving the accommodation early and not returning until early evening. I was also determined to cover as much as the island as possible, I don;t think my legs agreed with this after the second day.

Before the trip I had a few Puffin shots in mind which I wanted to capture including these few.

During the first night on the island we went out around midnight to gain the amazing experience of the shearwaters coming in to the island. The noise was from them calling out to each other was intense along with the gush of air passing your head as they flew over you.

The little owl's were showing for most of the time but they kept their distance.

The short eared owls however gave us a great display on the last evening. This was a absolute pleasure to watch and get a few pictures of.



I could write pages and pages more about this trip and I will be returning again next year. If you have never been to Skomer Island I would recommend it highly.

Gigrin Farm

Friday 2nd July
Up early and packed the gear into the car. I was on my way down to Skomer to spend the next 3 days on the island with a 15 other togs from talk photography forum. On the way down to Skomer we had arranged to visit Gigrin Farm and meet up with 4 others from the forum. This was a first for me and really looking forward to it. The weather was good and we even had a blue sky at times. We had chosen to go in the new taller hide which gave a lot more photo opportunities.
We arrived early and got set up in the hide, a very nice friend lent me his 400mm f5.6 which was a dream to us and so quick to focus.
I really didn't know what to expect and as the time got closer to feeding the kites and buzzards were coming closer. I couldn't believe how many there were.

The feeding lasted around 2 1/2 hours and during this time I was mostly shooting hand held but also used the tripod for ground shots and to give my arms a rest.

We had the pleasure of the white Red kite visiting which was nice to see.


I found myself having a soft spot for the buzzards and taking a lot of photo's of them. The colours really showed up well with the green fields in the background.


I went with some particular shots in mind with the one being a full frame head shot. This is what I managed to capture.


After a great afternoon and very tiered arms it was time to leave and head down to Pembroke to spend the night camping and to be ready early in the morning for the boat across to Skomer.

Welcome

Well here goes, the design is now getting there so I better start posting. Got so much to post so I better stop thinking about it and get on with it. First blogs to follow very soon.