Stonechats! Part Deux
With special guest star Reed Bunting!
Following my last trip to Cresswell – when the Stonechats were very obliging but the weather was a bit of a disappointment – I had a hankering for another look when the Sun was out and so, with the forecast looking good today, I set myself some targets: Stonechats again (obviously!), Tree sparrows, Meadow pipits and Reed buntings.
Being a sunny weekend there were a lot more folk about than on my last visit, and so I didn’t even bother with the beach – there’d be no hope of any waders – and instead decided to stick to the dunes until I reached Cresswell pond, at which time I’d wander across and see if I could catch a Tree spuggie or two.
The Stonechats weren’t nearly as precocious as on my last visit, and I really had to work for my pictures: I needed to use some fieldcraft tricks in order to get within reasonable striking distance, but as a result of a bit of hard work and some light, I ended up with some nice images, including what I consider to be my favourite Stonechat image – I’m really pleased with this first one:
Stonechat
Stonechat
Stonechat
Stonechat
Stonechat
The Tree sparrows didn’t work out – plenty at the site, but they weren’t playing – but I did find myself in the company of a lovely little Reed bunting for a while. Obviously busy looking after the bairns, she allowed me to hunker down in a little hollow near to an old barbed wire fence that she routinely landed on en route to the nest, and I was able to get some cracking images without causing her any stress.
Again, the first one is now one of my all-time favourite Reed bunting pictures:
Reed bunting
Reed bunting
Reed bunting
Reed bunting
From start to finish I was only shooting for about three hours – a short day by normal standards – but I knew I had some nice images to show for my quick trip, and was keen to get them home!
With these pictures I can honestly say that I’m now a Lightroom 3 convert (no pun intended) – the image quality it’s capable of providing from 7D files has got me hooked.
Some cracking images there Keith, I like the second image of the female Stonechat best and the Reed Buntings are very nice too!
Also glad to hear you are liking Lr3 ;)
Thanks Mark.
I really need to reorganise the site to support 1000 px images, because even that little bit bigger, the extra detail the 7D can capture leaps out, and these pictures look much better, bigger.
And yep, Lr 3 is finally looking like what I’d always wanted it to be: if I’m honest though, I’d love an Lr Lite, with just the conversion and image manipulation tools but without the database/DAM functionality, because that’s pretty much all I use it for.
You do realise of course, that a key reason for the demosaicing/NR improvements in Lr 3 is the “unequal green channel” design of the 7D’s sensor, so – in a way – we 7D users can take some credit for Lr3!