A turn around the lake...
Today saw me at the QE II lake and country park just outside of Ashington.
I used to fish here for Pike back in the day and – persuaded by my buddy Mark’s recent encounters with a pair of Great Crested Grebes (a bird that has never stayed within 400mm range for me long enough to get a decent image of) – I thought a trip up might be interesting: there’d be opportunities for gulls and other wildfowl too, and the low willow and sallow woodland all around the lake would hopefully give me some opportunities for warblers and Reed Buntings.
The weather was glorious – not a cloud in the sky – but a bit breezier than I’d have liked, which made the gulls more of a challenge than usual.
I particularly wanted a BHG against the green of the woodland in the background, but the only image I managed with a bird in an interesting “pose” didn’t quite work as planned. Heavy crop too, and IQ has further suffered from crunching the image down to web resolution.
A “nearly” shot, then:
Black Headed Gull
After several near misses with Warblers and a loud but always-just-out-of-shot Wren, I took the soft option of a few frames of the obliging Canada Geese at the car-park end, where visitors feed them:
Canada Goose
(This is nowhere near the best goose image, but most of the rest have OOF gulls and swans all over the background).
There are always a few “Yuck ducks” about too. Let’s face it, they’re bonny little things, and they’re good practice for difficult exposure situations (Raw Therapee’s excellent highlight recovery tools make me very confident of ETTR):
Domestic duck
Eventually I came across the Great Crested Grebes – it’s a pretty big lake and Mark hadn’t told actually me where they were!
I’ll say right now that I didn’t really get the images I was hoping for.
I was lying flat on the bank (and slowly sinking into rank mud – just what you need when the journey home is on a bus!) to take these, and still couldn’t get the kind of “bird’s eye level” perspective I was after; the water was a bit more choppy than I’d have liked; and I really could have done with more lens.
Even so, they’re my best yet, and these two images are pretty nice I think – the first being my favourite of all the GCG images I got today:
Great Crested Grebe
Great Crested Grebe
not bad Keith
personally I prefer the second one – nicely timed on the ‘mini wave’
Thanks Mark.
I prefer the first because it has something of the “separating the bird from the background” look that a properly low POV gets you, as mentioned by Mark Wilson here.
I love the top picture you have taken it is a great shot and the detail is fanatic. Also like the Great Crested Grebe have not seen one in years I have seen a little Grebe.
Nice photographs
Thank you Simon – I admit that, faults and all, I’m quite pleased by the Grebe shots.
For Little Grebes, I recommend the small “ditch” in front of the Visitor Centre at Cley Marshes in North Norfolk – there’s a breeding pair of Little Grebes there, and they’re very approachable.
Hi Keith. I would agree about ‘yuck ducks’, they are often pretty and quite intriguing.
As for the grebe shots, I like the upper one without the wave, it looks more ‘balanced’ to me.
As I am going through a ‘phase’ of burned out highlights, I might have to give Raw Therapee a go. I tried it about three years ago, but got big black bands on my Raw files. Maybe time for another crack at using it…
Fay
Hi Fay – thanks again for dropping by.
Raw Therapee really is very good at handling highlights – this is one of the main reasons for me using it really – and it’s very stable on my XP machine.
I also just like the image quality it produces, and given that it’s free, there’s no downside to giving it a go, I reckon.
At least if you get stuck, you know someone who might be able to help..!
Hi Keith
Just bumped into your GCG pics. Tell ya what Killingworth Lake in the last month has given excellent opportunities. There has been 2 families there, 1 on the larger and 1 on the smaller lakes. At times both families within 10 metres of the bank. I actually bumped into you via the link after Googling Caistron Lake which i bumped into today while out on a walk.
Some excellent shots. i love your enthusiasm.I think some photographers are too clinical in there approach which sometimes comes through in there shots.
Keep up the good work, i’ll certainly keep popping back.
Cheers
John Atkinson
Hi John,
apologies for the tardy response – I’ve been away on business and I’m just catching up now. I’m very grateful for the kind words.
Killingworth Lake is a place I often think about checking out, but it strikes me that the best spot would be next to the bus stop at the south east corner of the main lake, and the trees there look like they’d be a problem for light.
That said, I know there are tons of birds on there that seem pretty relaxed about people (an advantage of lakes in an urban setting), so I’ll have to give the place a proper look – I often pass the lake on the way home from work, so it’d be daft not to, really.
Watch this space..!