Capture The Moment

Newbiggin

Newbiggin is far from the prettiest place to bird or take bird photos, but it does have quite a record for interesting sightings.

More importantly for me, the beach is usually relatively untroubled by dogs, and is often a lot cleaner and (errr….) sandier than St Mary’s, for example: and it’s nicer sand too.

If the birds are obliging it’s possible to get really some nice wader shots there, and I was there specifically to shoot some eye-level Sanderling, Dunlin and Turnstones.

I failed comprehensively in that aim..!

There were just very few of those species about. Even though the light was wonderful and the tide was coming in – perfect conditions – and I had the beach almost to myself, without the birds there’s not much to be done.

Perversely, the place was full of Redshank, dozens of them avidly feeding on the critters in the seaweed dumped on the shore by the previous tide.

Redshank are horrendously flighty – a royal pain to shoot well with a “short” lens like my 100-400mm. But sometimes a little bit of field (or in this case, beach) craft can go a long way.

I approached the group as close as I confidently could as normal then lay down on my side, and waited a little while as they got used to me.

By standing my camera bag (my Lowepro Fastback 350 – quite a big bag) in front of me my outline was pretty well broken up, and I was then able to move forward a few feet at a time, moving my bag ahead of me while doing so.

It worked really well, and I got to within about 15 feet of the birds.

I’m sure I could have got a lot closer to the birds too, but some numpty of a birder decided to plonk himself down on the small cliff behind the beach for a bit of sea-watching, right above where the birds were, resulting in their instant – and permanent – panicked retreat.

So these are cropped a lot more than I’d have liked, but as I’ve said before the 40D does surprisingly well for “only” 10 mp.

Redshank

Black Headed Gull

Redshanks

Redshanks

Redshank