This is a male Whinchat that I saw and photographed yesterday. As usual there is a bit of a story which is quite interesting. As you will know if you read the blog regularly, Dartmoor is one of my favourite places because it is so beautiful, isolated, quiet and peaceful. Yesterday I sacrificed the delights of Wimbledon for a wonderful late afternoon on the moor at Sousons Plantain (Warren House). I pretty much had the whole area to myself, imagine that! Thousands of Acres of beautiful landscape in bright sun all to yourself with just birds and insects as company.
After the walk down the hill to the bottom valley path I caught sight of a couple of Whinchat who were showing beautifully. I quickly unpacked the chair hide and set it up with the sun at my back facing the area that the birds were seeming to favour.
The pictures show both sexes and I am sure you can tell which is which. One thing that stands out in both is the very bold eye stripe a diagnostic feature of this species and something that makes them easy to tell apart from a Stonechat, I guess you could confuse hen Stonechat and Hen Whinchat but not if you had seen them. They do share the same habitat though and are basically the same colour.
As I sat in the hide which is fantastic by the way and I would fully recommend one to you. (Light and easy to erect in under 20 seconds). The birds quickly settled and went about their activities which basically involved feeding and flitting around. I was hoping that I would get one in front of the hide but they were slightly wary of it and stayed away the nearest being about 20 feet.
At one point a pair of Linnets came right in front of the hide so close that the camera was struggling to focus. I was really disappointed because the Sigma 50-500, on the camera at that moment, has a very noisy motor on the auto-focus and the noise of the lens "hunting" spooked the Linnets almost immediately and I didn't get a picture which would have been a cracker, they are hard to get very close to in my experience.
After a short while I left them alone because even though I am pretty sure they are not breeding at the moment this was certainly a breeding territory and even though I was not disturbing them it is better not to take risks with birds like this.
All in all I had a smashing afternoon and one that plan to repeat today in the hope of something special photographically. This is a nice addition to my galleries of birds though. I have in the past received comments that I must be doing something different to get so close to my subjects. Well I can assure you that this is not the case. I just watch from a distance and then make my move with my hide and sit quietly and then wait for my subjects to settle, usually only a minute or two and then get the best photos I can with good light and a good firm tripod....... something I never mention but I NEVER take a picture without a tripod. I also use military cam netting to put around the protruding camera which is always a big help.
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