More from Tuesdays one 2 one

As mentioned in my previous posting, I spent yesterday at Martin Mere WWT reserve. The agenda for the day was to cover some of the more basic photographic theory such as exposure, focusing techniques and in general how to squeeze the best possible performance from today's sophisticated SLR's.

On these more theory based days we cover a lot of ground and still find plenty of time for some photography practice.







I have seen this Water Rail (Rallus aquaticus) on a few previous visits to the reserve, so we
made a point of stopping by to try for a few images. We were not disappointed and we both
managed a few nice frames of this fascinating bird.

Whilst a reasonably common species, the Water Rail is a relatively elusive species, more often heard than seen. What was interesting about this bird was the way it was picking small frozen fish from the surface of the frozen pond. I must say I haven't seen this behaviour before. I'm interested to know just how the birds digestive system copes with frozen food!



We also captured a few Shots of a very confident Moor Hen(Gallinula chloropus) which showed well in some super light. The Moor Hen was also feeding on the frozen fish, so this must be fairly normal winter practice for these water birds.





To finish off the day we stopped by the Swan Link Hide aiming to catch some Whooper Swans and do a spot of wader photography to test the focusing skills.



Ruff (Philomachus pugnax) all images Nikon D3s Nikkor 600mm F4VR