Elmley cormorant

I need to book another day at Elmley soon. I have no idea what is there at the moment, but I could really do with a day just sitting in my car, driving up and down the entrance track and generally chilling out. There is far more than the entrance track, of course, but the hides are too far for me to walk, even without carrying a rucksack with my camera and 600mm lens, plus a very heavy tripod.

This photograph of a lovely cormorant was taken back in March and probably wouldn’t have been possible without my new Smart car. It is the first vehicle I’ve driven with Eco mode and I’ve found it very useful when approaching birds along the track. The engine stops when I touch the brake and so I was able to creep much closer to this bird than I would have expected. Every time he dived under the water, I moved forward a few yards, touching the brake pedal when he surfaced. Once I was close enough, I moved into the passenger seat – also when he was submerged. By the time I had the camera on my bean bag over the open window, he was still blissfully unaware of my presence.

I was able to stay long enough to take a series of images, but the one featured above remains my favourite. Oddly enough, it was another car approaching from behind that finally spooked the bird and he flew off into the distance.