Monday, 12 May 2014

Terns and Gulls at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

Following on from my previous post, I also went down to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve near sunset to try out the new camera down there and see how well it did in lower light. Combined with the long Tamron lens I got last year, it did a very nice job of catching these two Common Terns, one with a fish in its beak:

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The main wildlife attraction down there at the moment is the Black Headed Gulls, which are nesting on the islands in the lakes:
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This one looks like he's making a speech, and the others are listening!
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"I'm coming in to land, get out of the way!"
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I couldn't see any eggs yet, and some birds were still mating:
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There was one which didn't seem to have found a partner, so was going around trying to mate with any other bird sat on a nest, which didn't go down too well:
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Unsurprisingly some fights developed, and I got this sequence of photos:
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There was also a bird with a nest on a floating raft of some sort, and although there was easily space there for a couple more nests, it was defending its territory vigorously!
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I did also try a few 'arty' shots, at an earlier time of day when there was more light, such as this HDR one:
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and also a few selective colour ones:
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Looking forward to getting down there again soon and looking to see if the gulls have had chicks...

Mike

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