More Coly news- Dipper, Kingfishers. Plus some Axe bird pics

After recently having decided to try and get interested in gulls, I headed out to the Axe estuary yesterday afternoon as a Caspian Gull and two Iceland Gulls had been seen that same morning. I didn't see any of them. I later discovered that I was looking in the wrong place for the Casp. I went to look at the tram shed area as that's where it was last reported to be seen. I later learned (when checking through the blogs after I got home) that it had in fact flown to the South end of Seaton Marshes but obviously blog posts aren't generally updated 'live' so there was no way for me to know this at the time. I did see at least 35 Black Tailed Godwits on the Estuary though, with 29 being on Coronation Corner and a few a bit further downstream. Here's a few pics (the birds were backlit for some of the pics so the colours look a bit off (it's fairly apparent which pics this applies to):

This is the only pic that's not heavily backlit

Here's a pic of a Lapwing (from last weekend) taken at Seaton Marshes:

And I took a pic of a GULL. Unfortunately not a Casp or Iceland Gull:

I went for a brief walk down the River Coly after work today and saw a male Kingfisher a few times. It kept landing in front of me for some reason. Whenever I heard it's call I stopped moving, knowing that it was flying my way, and at least 3 times it landed on a branch within 15 ish metres of me. I didn't get any pics anywhere near last years standard so I won't post anymore just yet. Also saw one Kingfisher yesterday. Here are a couple of yesterdays pics of a Dipper (I was gradually getting quite close to it before it got scared off by an ignorant dog walker. I might start taking pics of these people and posting mugshots to shame them!! In fairness a different dog walker did at least make an effort to try not to disturb the birds. Even if the effort was insufficient). I didn't see the Dipper at all today (first time I haven't successfully tracked it down for weeks). I'll probably have another go tomorrow.

Hopefully I'll get a shot of this bird in some pleasant sunshine soon. Everything so far has been in VERY shady conditions. They'd probably look awful had I not had the tripod with me, the shutter speeds were around 1/160 sec whereas I like to keep it around the 1/500 sec mark at the SLOWEST (sometimes you just have to make a compromise and hope for the best though).