There and Back

This is one of our favourite places to visit and so we were looking forward to today. After all, spring is here, and we should see something of interest? We did - and here are some of my efforts! In among the gorse, we were entertained by the family of Stonechats. Apparently, On heathland in the south of England, Dartford Warblers can often be seen following Stonechats around, perhaps catching the small insects that the larger bird disturbs. We were lucky / unlucky enough to see a Dartford Warbler flit past while we were photographing the Stonechats, but were not quick enough to get the picture! Two youngsters deciding who was to have the worm. Dunnock sitting on the gorse A Whitethroat, but the quality is rather poor due to the distance it was away from me. Although a common bird with a dubious reputation, the Magpie is a rather good looking bird, especially if you catch one in sunlight. A Redshank walking the edge of the Scrape

Today was a reasonably early start (8:30am) as we wanted to be at Lackford Lake while the kingfishers were possible feeding, as opposed to late morning when they might have been hiding away for a while. That was the idea anyway! - and it worked! We arrived well before the Center was open and made our way to the hides. The double decker one providing us with some real chances of Kingfisher images. The lens I was using has a maximum extension of 200mm, so is limited as far as wildlife goes, but the images I came home with were pretty good I thought. The first two are of a mother? heron seemingly `talking` to her young one, who made a noise but otherwise remained rooted to the spot. "I don't want to swim mummy". The prize of the trip, some images of a kingfisher moving from perch to perch while shutters were firing around us like machine guns! My offerings are above and below, and although not as close up as many people with huge lens, I was more tha