I‘ve been to Oare marshes twice now. The first time was in early December because I wanted to increase my tally of reserves for the year to ten. It seemed silly, but secretly I wanted to see if I could get lucky with some of the waders, or even the smaller birds that had been reported to hang out along the southern path.
The first bright day in ages turned out to be one of the coldest too and with temperatures close to freezing, the wind chill brought it down to around -7C. I only have the one coat, but at least I had a pair of woollen gloves. In reality, I needn’t have bothered because within ten minutes my fingers were nearly frozen and painful. I hung the little Powershot round my neck and took it in turns to warm one hand at a time in my pockets. For once I had also donned a hat, but that threatened to blow off in the strong wind and there were times when I needed both hands just to keep it in place.
I managed to walk around the perimeter, but there were no waders close enough to photograph. However, I must have pressed a button without knowing it at one point and on getting home I was amused to find nearly 20 minutes of out of focus video. It summed up my trip rather nicely, so I trimmed it down to a short clip and it can be seen (and heard) below.
The second visit was just a few days ago, although this time I waited until my husband could spend the day working from home. I don’t like to leave the cats alone for more than three hours at a time and especially now when we had good reason to need supervision. (All will be revealed in another blog post very soon).
This time the weather couldn’t have been more different. It was warm and still, but there were absolutely no waders to be seen at all. Before there had been hundreds, even if they were too far out on the mudflats. I tried the southern path where I had previously spotted a pair of goldfinches before. I actually took some shots back then, but as they were waving around in the gale, while firmly grasping the top of a gorse bush, nothing came out to my satisfaction. This time there was nothing, although I could hear chirping coming from the direction of the reeds.
I made my way back to the car where I had a makeshift lunch standing by the side of the single track road. Looking towards the southern hide, I could see a small bird flitting around and displaying on the bulrushes. It had to be a stonechat, so brushing off the crumbs, I picked up the camera once again and crept carefully up the path. The bird stayed well out of reach, but not far enough for my superzoom and here are some photographs of what is turning out to be one of my favourite little birds. I will certainly be going back to this reserve again, although probably not until the summer.
sidilbradipo1
14 Feb 2018Stunning shots 😀
But I cannot watch the clip, there is an error.
Ciao
Sid
Zooey
14 Feb 2018Thank you for letting me know. The clip is still working for me on Firefox. I put a copy HERE for my Facebook friends. That may work for you 🙂
sidilbradipo1
14 Feb 2018Hi!
I still have problems with the clip but recently I have problems with the notifications of your posts, too!
I’ll try to register here and hope it’ll work 😛
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Sid
Zooey
14 Feb 2018I wish I could help, but I’m not very good with WordPress and I don’t have time to learn. We get up at 5.30 in the morning and don’t finish the zoo until 7.30 at night and then we still have to get our own dinner. I do all the housework and whatever needs doing in the fields. Finding time to get out with the cameras isn’t easy.
I have Jetpack installed which is supposed to link back to WordPress.com and I keep everything updated. Yes… I do think you can register to be notified by e-mail. I think two of my followers use this option. At least I sorted out my own notification problems because I wasn’t being informed of comments. That was fixed by installing yet another plug-in.
Happy Valentines Day to you too! 🙂