nailing the gropper

with wedding attendance looming later in the morning the sight of bright sunlight streaming through the curtains prompted me to get out and have another go at the local Grasshopper Warblers---experience over the years has shown me that they only sing from exposed perches for a very limited period in late April and early May, as a rule, and if you miss this window then another year has passed---invariably the weather is a key factor and in poor wet springs there may not be a single morning when the birds perform---2006 was proving to be a good spring for me having seen/heard 6 birds to date and with two local birds the species was high on the target list but so far birds had either sung for only short periods or had been firmly esconced in the middle of bushes or inaccessible in bushes in reedbeds---by 06:40 this morning I had located the best of our local birds access wise and it was performing very well the problem now being that every bush it used for singing was being disputed by an aggressive male Sedge Warbler!---eventually though it all came together and I was able to get some good shots just witht he 300mm lens of this very obliging bird in some nice light before the clouds built form the north