Last weekend was Tom’s 30th
Birthday Party (the much anticipated Birthday was the week before), I think my
liver has almost recovered. More importantly, a few weeks before Tom, Jack and
I had bundled into the car in hope of Tom’s all important 300th
bird.
With it being such an important
tick, we had our eyes set on one of the UK’s scarcest breeding birds, the
thought being that we could be certain of a good view near their nest site. For
Jack and I this meant a four-hundred-and-sixty-mile round trip, for Tom it was
a mere 400 hundred miles. We decided to head to his and let him do the bulk of
the driving; three and a bit hours and a lot of junk food later, we were safely
on the Northumberland coastline, enjoying one last coffee in The Fat Mermaid
(cakes highly recommended) before meeting our boat.
The harbour was full of redshank,
black headed gulls, eclipse eider, and the occasional sandwich tern (each one
causing us to flinch). We had a worrying few minutes wondering whether we would
be allowed onto the over booked boat, but fortunately places were found for
all. Jack took the 450D and the 250 lens, I took the 7D and the Sigma 500, and
the frantic snapping began. The air was full of guillemots, razorbills and
puffins, gannets dove further offshore, and there was a constant coming and
going of terns.
Tom and I flicked between cameras
and bins, looking for dark bills, bright clean wings, long tail feathers; the
hallmarks of the roseate tern. We approached Coquet Island over fifteen
minutes, somewhat impatient as the boat stopped to take in seals hauled out in
the shallows. We had both had likely looking birds at a distance, but nothing
definite to our untrained eyes.
Slowly, we edged around the
island, nipping in close to peer through binoculars at the pairs perched around
their nest boxes. Then, joy; not 5 meters from the boat an adult fluttered down
to the sea surface and began to bathe, allowing us some awkward but beautifully
clear pictures. Delighted doesn’t begin to cover our mood as we snapped away, then
put aside the cameras for a really focused look.
We were so chuffed that dipping on black tern on the way home (and missing
little bittern in the process) didn’t bother us at all.
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| Bathing Roseate |
Jack had even greater success with the 450D than I did with the 7, the shorter lens coping much better with the changing light. He managed to get all of the following shots, catching many of the best diagnostic images ...and he's never borrowing my camera again...
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| Jack's improved image of the beak |
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| Jack's shot showing the individual crown feathers... |
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| ...and Jack's image of the dark primaries... |
Of course, Tom being Tom, a few
days later he snuck out after work for the East Leake bee-eaters, entering his
third decade on 301. So now we both have 400 before 40 firmly in our sights,
with Tom holding a 47 species and two year advantage. I’d better get my skates
on.
