Cracking views from BHM (and more)

I briefly went to BHM yesterday evening after work. I took a few (dozen) shots of a Kestrel hunting in the area behind the Field Studies Base. Also there was a Green Sandpiper and a Black-Tailed Godwit on the scrape. Here's some of yesterdays pics:

Shame about the damned lines!!

Dinner!

Today:
After work I motorbiked off to visit Black Hole Marsh to see what was about. Nothing unusual (except the car park was VERY full; little did I know that there was an event on today!) but I got some shots of birds in some SUN for a change. Which has become a rarity of late. When I arrived, there were two Wood Sandpipes in view from the peep holes on the left hand side of the path towards the main BHM hide. After a few minutes a third turned up, and the sun came out. Late afternoon sun always seems to be best for making the photos look good; nice and contrasty, as well as adequately saturated. Here's a shot of all three together (this took a while to achieve as they tend to spread themselves out a bit):

Lovely birds!

From the far end of the Black Hole Marsh reserve there was a Greenshank visible (at a fair distance) from the viewing platform:

Moving to the hide, there was a rather tame Little Egret that was determined to be photographed. This is a very rare complaint from me, but the bird was too close to fit in the frame of the camera at times... Unfortunately the Egret was on the West side of the hide so it was silhouetted when it eventually caught a fish that was big enough to be worth photographing (ahem). I'll post the pic anyway, along with a few others:

I'm quite pleased with this shot.

Another bird which showed well for people in the hide was a Grey Heron. Thankfully this one was fully in the sun. Ahh being able to use ISO 100 or even 200 on my camera is a novelty! Here's some pics of the Heron:

Not a bad afternoon of wildlife watching & photography :-).