Suffolk in Springtime

It's been a while since my last post, and I've managed to fit in quite a bit of photography since my exams finished at the end of May. First I was in Suffolk for 3 weeks again, doing some photography for the RSPB at Minsmere while Springwatch were filming there. As with last year I had a great time and even managed to wangle my way onto Springwatch extra again to talk about my photography! (Link was on iPlayer but this blog post has taken me so long to write that it's no longer there...) Unlike last year I came back with barely any Bittern images, but instead was able to spend time photographer other species I hadn't had a chance to before.

As ever there will be lots more images appearing on my Facebook page here and Twitter page here so head over and check them out!

A Cormorant, Great White Egret and Grey Heron perched on this wooden structure together. The egret was present for the whole of my stay, but this was the best view I had of it.

A Bittern flies up from the reeds to see off a hunting male Marsh Harrier. Both these species use the reed beds for feeding and nesting, and are unusual in that they would probably both take each others chicks if given the chance. I saw this happen a few times last year but never managed to get it on camera, and this time I didn't have much time to capture it before the Bittern dropped back down, so was pretty pleased with the result!

One morning whilst walking between two of the scrape hides, I came across a particularly aggressive Little Egret which was chasing off any other egrets that came onto this pool.  This was taken as it landed having chased the last one off.

The Bearded Tits were very active this year and gave superb views to visitors. As well as capturing frame-filling images of them, I was keen to capture some photos of them in their environment.

 While waiting for Barn Owls one evening at the back of the local pub this male Marsh Harrier suddenly took off from the field in front of me, allowing me to get about 3 images before it had banked too far around. I've never really got close enough to photograph them, so this was a nice bonus before the owls appeared.

Taken on the same evening as the previous image, this owl spent nearly an hour hunting over this field, which was conveniently located at the park of the Eels Foot Inn car park!

I had photographed Avocets before, but had never had the chance to get close to their chicks. This year they had a very productive year on the scrape and while I was there there were over 50 chicks out. One family would often come very close to one of the hides so I spent several mornings there photographing them.

This Ringed Plover and its mate had nested on the beach and had two chicks with them. I spent a brief period (so as not to disturb them) one morning photographing them.

I've also spent the last couple of weeks photographing wildlife more local to me, and some of those images will appear in the next blog post.