Marsworth in April Warmth

Arriving later than intended, I found my conscience heading towards me – I was greeted by another photographer who was departing, and he hailed me as a "Latecomer" I had to acknowledge he was entirely correct! We stopped for a brief chat; he felt he should have come down with a wider angle and taken some landscapes as he said the mist was very attractive when he came down, and he had had no luck with his hopes of capturing kingfishers. He can take comfort from my only seeing a single flyby of one. However a heron flew in and even landed where we might normally have been sited!

I got shots of him seeking out fish, and he did catch one, but he was shielded from me at the moment by a tree trunk! He flew to several different perches, but all my images of him were shot through a veil of branches. I caught a mere glimpse of a grebe that had also successfully caught its fish breakfast, but he downed it before I got a chance to get him in my sights.

After staying awhile, I made my way back and spotted another grebe couple, a cormorant and a swan making a brief takeoff and landing; the grebe's advances were cut short by a mallard making a noisy pass at a reluctant drake which promptly hid amongst the reeds. I moved on and was almost deciding to call it a day when I saw yet another pair of grebe on Startops starting on their display, they both paddled in opposing circles before coming together again and I managed to capture at least a part of their ritual, before they decided to go their own way – it never reached the sharing of weeds stage.

That was the end of this particular trip.