London Wetland Centre

As I live in west London, the London Wetland Centre is a site that I visit a lot. I was hoping to get some images of the Bittern that is present there, but as it was not very cold it stayed hidden in the reeds for the day. Instead I came away with a number of images of different species.

On the way to the first hide I encountered a Robin singing off to the side of the path. After a while it hopped onto the fence next to the path where it sat for a while, allowing me to get a couple if images.

From the first hide there was a pair of Mute Swans swimming towards the hide. I got one image as the Swan swam towards me, and then another when it was further away.

After I had been in the hide for a while, I moved on around the reserve. I came to one of the few areas where you can get near to water level to shoot at eye level, and this area happens to be hit by the morning sunlight, and somewhere frequented by Little Grebes. I lay down on the boardwalk and started shooting the pair of birds as they fished in the lake. Unfortunately neither caught a fish, but the light was fantastic, as were the reflections in the water.

When the Grebes had swan underneath the boardwalk and down to the other end of the channel, I got up and moved on to the hide. Here there were a number of gulls in front of the hide, and although they were too far away for the majority of the time, sometimes they came close enough.

The image of the juvenile gull was the only on in the series to be sharp and include the whole bird! Before it took off I had the top focus point selected to photograph it standing on the edge of an island, and so when it raised its wings above its head I could not fit them in the frame!

As well as the gulls, two cormorants also swam across in front of the hide.

The second bird looks to me like it may be a Sinensis rather than a Carbo due to the angle of the gular pouch, but I am not certain so I will look into it. They still look superb with the white feathers on their neck.

So that was it for that day, but I will probably be out shooting on Sunday so should have a new post next week sometime.

Thanks for reading!