Sedge Warbler and Whisky

anyone who was at the Bird Fair at Rutland and visited the British Birds stand or who takes BB will have possibly seen my displaying Sedge Warbler photo that was placed 4th in the BB bird photo of the year 2012. I thought it had a decent chance of a high place but groups of judges seldom seem to come to the conclusions that the majority of people do so I was rather pleased to get an email from Roger Riddington, editor of BB and of course past Lincs birder, telling me the following;

You missed a lot of excitement at the fair, namely a public vote on the shortlisted BPY pics, to see if the general public agreed with our judges.
Unsurprisingly, the public did not. Almost 1200 people voted, and the winner was... A Sedge Warbler in flight over  a Lincs reedbed. Well done. 

As compensation a fine bottle of Malt Whisky was delivered to my door -- anyway here is the shot for anyone who has not seen it --always good to know that your fellow birders / photographers agree with what you think is a good image -- 


And the people’s winner is…

If you do not subscribe to British Birds you should --http://www.britishbirds.co.uk/

back

last post July 22nd over a month ago -- its been a long time and next week I should have been posting shots of Western Sands and west coast gulls and seabirds from Vancouver Island but chronic back pain and sciatica have left me spending most of the last 3 weeks on the floor and having to cancel the big trip to Canada at the last moment; in fact this is the first time I have managed to sit at a computer for 3 weeks but maybe things will start to look up a bit from now; the camera has a seized up shutter after such a long lay off!

2cy Hobby

catching damselflies on the local patch ----

flying Woodpigeons

Canon 1D4 and 300 2.8 II with 1.4x III

Common Buzzard

an adult watching me watching its 3 fledged young and one of the juvs

odonates

suffering inactivity due to recurring back complaint so a few just worked on from last week -- still working on the floor with the laptop unable to sit!

Ruddy Darters, Azure and Large Red Damselflies

Pochard and Tufted broods

it has been a pretty dire breeding season for wildfowl locally so finding three broods of 5, 5, and 7 Pochard and a 4 of Tufted yesterday was an improvement but shows how late some species are this year -- first broods of Pochard usually appear in the second week of May

juvenile Buzzard

one of a brood of 3 --

Hummingbird Hawk

a sunny, well sometimes sunny, day at last and a few dragons but not a lot -- very few butterflies apart from Ringlets and Meadow Browns then came across this Hummingbird Hawk moth feeding on the bugloss -- All shots Canon 1D4 and Canon 300 2.8 II

and a male Hobby

watching teh juv Swallows I was thinking about my favourite bird when the Hobby alert call went up and there was a local male chasing the flock -- it went off empty footed which was rather nice in some ways as I had been enjoying the juv Swallows! -- also had a juv Cuckoo this morning my first for a few years around here

male Kestrel