KenM
Well-known member
On Wednesday May 20th (with the government easing of travel restrictions) we a family unit of three, broke out of lockdown and headed East to Felixstowe.Because of a tight schedule and sod's law being what it is....having to drop off family members at one point of the resort whilst I Birded the reserve, with an agreed phone call for pick-up time.
It was always going to follow that if anything of ''interest'' was to be found....it would be just moments before the ''pick-up'' phone call. That's when I found this Sylvia warbler deep in a ''shadowed'' bush (thinking probable Lesser Whitethroat), although I thought that I'd seen pink tints through the viewfinder to the under-parts). Whereby I rattled off a burst of shots before it flew towards the beach bushes, with these being the best of a bad bunch before having to leave.
Meeting up with wife and grandson for a picnic lunch and discussing the morning's events coerced me into forgetting the ''Lesser Whitethroat'' images in camera, before remembering some forty five minutes later!
Upon reviewing the shots I went into panic mode! as me returning to site for another hour, wouldn't go down well with the family, thus sowing some discontent all round. Eventually with the other side agreeing....I was on my way with an hours ''play time''.
Needless to say apart from a Lesser and Common Whitethroat several Linnets and a few Swallows heading South there was no sign of the bird in question. With less than half an hour remaining I agonised do I put it out on what some might regard as flimsy evidence and set hares running, or do I conveniently forget about it?
I decided that with a leave time of 4pm there would be a good four hours of daylight left for ''locals'' to search thus I put it out on RBA as a Subalpine Warbler, within 15 minutes a birder arrived, I told him that I'd taken some bad images which he asked to see. This is where social distancing went out the window (with us both losing the plot!)....as he remained unconvinced peering into the LCD screen with heads being perhaps a foot apart! It was only my wife's timely arrival...screaming! ''social distancing ''that we both re-coiled and beat a hasty retreat!
Upon returning home some two hours later I reviewed the images on the computer, also sending them to colleagues for appraisal. I got ''looks interesting, but should the tail look that dark, perhaps better suited for LW which had been present in the bush at the same time. Feeling a bit miffed that I didn't have a clean head shot of the bird and wondering if the sensor in the camera had ''exaggerated'' the blue-grey tint because of the lighting (don't know if this is possible?) , I decided rightly, or wrongly, to declare it as erroneous and asked RBA pull the bird lest we set more hares running from further afield.
However, having subsequently seen the image of the recent Yorkshire (female) bird, I was struck at how almost dirty brown/grey the upper-parts appeared not realising that they can look like that, although having seen Subalpine at home and abroad, most of my sightings have been of males and thus not exactly too challenging......perhaps one that got away. :-C
Cheers
It was always going to follow that if anything of ''interest'' was to be found....it would be just moments before the ''pick-up'' phone call. That's when I found this Sylvia warbler deep in a ''shadowed'' bush (thinking probable Lesser Whitethroat), although I thought that I'd seen pink tints through the viewfinder to the under-parts). Whereby I rattled off a burst of shots before it flew towards the beach bushes, with these being the best of a bad bunch before having to leave.
Meeting up with wife and grandson for a picnic lunch and discussing the morning's events coerced me into forgetting the ''Lesser Whitethroat'' images in camera, before remembering some forty five minutes later!
Upon reviewing the shots I went into panic mode! as me returning to site for another hour, wouldn't go down well with the family, thus sowing some discontent all round. Eventually with the other side agreeing....I was on my way with an hours ''play time''.
Needless to say apart from a Lesser and Common Whitethroat several Linnets and a few Swallows heading South there was no sign of the bird in question. With less than half an hour remaining I agonised do I put it out on what some might regard as flimsy evidence and set hares running, or do I conveniently forget about it?
I decided that with a leave time of 4pm there would be a good four hours of daylight left for ''locals'' to search thus I put it out on RBA as a Subalpine Warbler, within 15 minutes a birder arrived, I told him that I'd taken some bad images which he asked to see. This is where social distancing went out the window (with us both losing the plot!)....as he remained unconvinced peering into the LCD screen with heads being perhaps a foot apart! It was only my wife's timely arrival...screaming! ''social distancing ''that we both re-coiled and beat a hasty retreat!
Upon returning home some two hours later I reviewed the images on the computer, also sending them to colleagues for appraisal. I got ''looks interesting, but should the tail look that dark, perhaps better suited for LW which had been present in the bush at the same time. Feeling a bit miffed that I didn't have a clean head shot of the bird and wondering if the sensor in the camera had ''exaggerated'' the blue-grey tint because of the lighting (don't know if this is possible?) , I decided rightly, or wrongly, to declare it as erroneous and asked RBA pull the bird lest we set more hares running from further afield.
However, having subsequently seen the image of the recent Yorkshire (female) bird, I was struck at how almost dirty brown/grey the upper-parts appeared not realising that they can look like that, although having seen Subalpine at home and abroad, most of my sightings have been of males and thus not exactly too challenging......perhaps one that got away. :-C
Cheers
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