A day at the harbour
Motivated by reports of thousands of little auks filling the skies along the North East coast, I had a wander over to Blyth harbour today.
Actually, I usually hit the harbour on Sundays, but there was extra incentive today…
I got there at about 1 o’ clock, and before I’d taken three steps onto the beach, I literally had to duck to avoid a face full of low-flying auk!
Down the beach was another bird photographer (first time I’ve seen anyone there apart from me with a camera): Canon 500mm f/4 lens, Canon 1D Mk II, Gitzo carbon tripod, Wimberley gimbal head – serious toys – so I introduced myself.
Said photographer was Richard Dunn and he proved to be very affable, outgoing company for the time I was there.
We wandered slowly down the beach, mildly awestruck by the birds all around us, and mildly miffed by their just too far awayness to get good pictures of!
On reaching the pier we bumped into another local photographer, John Malloy, who was there for the same reason we were – and had been since 10 o’ clock that morning.
Not long after, another local lad, Brian Bullough turned up.
During the course of the next few hours (in beautiful sunshine – exactly not what the BBC weather forecast had led me to expect) we saw hundreds, if not thousands, of little auks (and a surprising number of black headed gulls), and even I got some reasonable shots of them – including the less than pleasant sight of one auk disappearing slowly and inexorably down the throat of a great black backed gull!
I also had a wander around to the yacht club to see what was about: not a lot, but it’s hard to resist the chance to shoot eiders in great light…
To round the day off, I spent some time in the company of a very obliging purple sandpiper, which would quite happily wander so close that I couldn’t focus on it!
Good fun. There was a red throated diver between the piers too, but it was too far off for decent shots.