The only decent local birds I managed to get shots of lately have been of one of my favourite birds Spotted Flycatchers and this has been due to Nic Barlow who arranged me to go on a private estate and Chris Hill who e-mailed me re. a pair in Wroxhall Village and a pair in the grounds of Packwood House.
Having overdone shots of Spotted Flycatchers a bit in this blog lately I thought I'd better give these chaps a miss and do something different.I chose to go to the Nat.Trust property Upton House which is not far from Gaydon.The plan was to walk the gardens and do some macro work with the SX50 and give birding a miss.Well that was the plan.
Got there at 11.00 AM and walked down the delightful gardens to the lake.
Spent a pleasant couple of hours there trying for pics of the large Dragonflies on the lake but failing.They would not land for me despite me being very patient.Lots of Butterflies there as well but nothing special and all I got was a.few macro insect shots.
After a picnic lunch I headed back up the garden.I called in at another smaller lake that seemed full of Koi Carp including this monster.It was at least 50cms long.
As I walked along the terrace at the back of the main house on my way to have a look inside the house my eye caught sight of a distant bird perched low down on a post.Blow me down it was a Spotted Flycatcher.Are these chaps stalking me now ! !
It flew into a distant tree then came back along the house wall past me and landed in a vine growing on the house wall.Then another flew into the same spot.I'd found the nest.Sorry about this I didn't intend to post more shots of Spotted Flycatchers but my only excuse is that they are Warwickshire birds and the previous ones were West Midlands birds..Took a couple of shots with the SX50.
Going round the house which I'd done before was for gotten.I'd slipped easily into birding mode.I raced back to the car (well trudged back to the car as I no longer can do racing) to grab the 7D from the boot.One of the many great things about these chaps is that they are very obliging and this pair were no different.I just sat on the lawn about 5m away.
I left them alone after 30 mins and headed to the cafe for afternoon tea but just as I was about to turn onto the cafe path a couple of birds landed in a bush quite close to me.No guesses what they were.Another pair of Spotted Flycatchers.They definitely were stalking me ! !
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