Not a bad day of birding, and mothing (Hummingbird Hawk-moth)

Today was my completely free day (get one every 2-3 months due to work). I spent most of it out with the camera hoping to see something worth snapping. I started by walking a fair way up the River Coly but there wasn't much around. The best was a Buzzard and a Jay:

I headed out again in the afternoon and saw this Hummingbird Hawk-moth in the garden. I managed to get a few poor quality shots (it was only present for about 8 seconds and was struggling to fly in a stable manner due to the wind). This is the first one I've seen here since 2010!

I then spent the afternoon in Tower Hide; pics (lovely male Kingfisher, and many Little Grebes) to follow in my next post if/when I get time!

Pics from Tower Hide

With a brief time slot free after work & a dentist appointment yesterday, I visited BHM. I checked the marsh from Island Hide first, but with the only interesting birds being 2 Green Sandpipers, I headed to Tower Hide. Again, nothing unusual here, but I did take a few pics (got to keep this blog alive with something)!

I've also updated my other blog (Artistic (ish) Photography) so please have a browse if it's of any interest:
www.timwhitephotography.blogspot.com

New blog

This will probably only interest a select few of my readers, but I've started a new blog which concentrates primarily on photography projects and techniques. These will generally not be related to wildlife.
Here's a link:

http://timwhitephotography.blogspot.co.uk/

Pics of Green Sand, Little Grebe & Little Egret

Quick post just to show a few pics from Friday afternoon. The pic of the Green Sandpiper was taken by my phone (Samsung Galaxy S3, technically the best phone available at the moment, so needless to say it'll be old hat by Christmas!!) which was tethered to my 7D via the camera cable and USB Host OTG cable (different language to most of you I imagine. I'll put up some annotated pics of the set up to give you an idea when I get around to it).

Better Pectoral Sandpiper pics, Black Hole Marsh

Here's some pics of the Pec. Again these were taken late due to when I finish work (taken at 6pm), it was dark and very wet. It was just one of those times when I had to let the camera gear get wet and hope that there wouldn't be any detrimental consequences. The bird was still pretty distant but I could quite easily see over the bank to take a couple shots (no, I did not climb up the fence, like a passing person did!!).

Pectoral Sandpiper at Black Hole Marsh, with pics

Like yesterday it was dark and damp by the time I finished work, but a chance of getting better views of the Pec was just too tempting! It proved worthwhile too. The Pec was initially quite distant from island hide, sticking to the far edges of the marsh, but it was flushed by something along with the Green Sand it was near to. At this point I lost it, and Dad was all ready to go to home. So I had one last scan with the bins and s***! It was posing quite nicely on the other side of island hide. I was SURE it wasn't there before so maybe it hid behind some grass briefly before re-appearing. Unfortunately most of the birds on BHM flew up about 5 seconds after I noticed that the Pec was in good view, and the Pec was not an exception. Needless to say when it next landed, it was rather more distant again. Here's a couple of pics. To give you an idea of how dark it was, the general shot settings of (some) of the following images were:

ISO 800

Shutter speed 1/30 sec (about 17x slower than what I ideally needed)

Aperture f/4.0 (wide open)

If you have a vague knowledge of the more technical side of photography then you will appreciate that these shooting conditions were TERRIBLE, if not, then take my word for it!

The distance also made pics tricky, but it is recognisable so I can't be too disappointed considering it's my first Pec!

The Green Sands were slightly more obliging:

Now let's hope something else unusual turns up before autumn is completely over!

River Coly ringed Dipper info!

Frequent readers will have seen my multiple posts from this year about Dippers. If not then here's some posts that they featured in:

http://timwhitewildlife.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/successful-dipper-fledging-on-coly.html

http://timwhitewildlife.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/finally-river-colys-dipper-ring.html

http://timwhitewildlife.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/more-of-coly-kingfishers-and-dippers.html

http://timwhitewildlife.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/superb-birdlife-around-river-coly.html

There were other posts but that'll do!
I made it a mission to get enough shots of the ring to work out what was on it. I eventually succeeded by the end of August. I've now heard back from the BTO and the bird was ringed as a nestling on May 9th 2011, at Wilmington Trout Farm. So it turns out it's only come about 8km to here, but it's still interesting to know where it came from, and nice to get a response after a LOT of effort went into trying to get close enough photos of the ring.