First stop Venus Pool and it was barely light but an amazing (for VP anyway) TEN Gadwall including six males in front of the main hide was a fair start. A male Pintail also present.
My routine search for that potential Chelmarsh Diver was next, with a diversion via the Cressage Bewick haunts on the way - no joy, including a fruitless stop to scope what turned out to be fertiliser bags!!
Chelmarsh reservoir was enveloped in pea soup - no more than 50m visibility and after 30 mins of eyestrain with just a Cormorant or two to get me going, I decided to check out the scrape. Was I glad I did!!
There didn't seem to be much there, scanning around.....
A sleeping Common Snipe,
Oh and another one.... Er, wait a minute, that's a bit small for a Snipe, that head pattern and just look how bright the bird is.....
Yeeeeeeesssss! I had a Jack Snipe, out in the open and literally 15 metres away!!
While I waited for him to wake up, some decent shots of the 'Common' for starters....
There were at least four Water Rails around too. Check out that last picture, at 1/15 sec, any movement usually destroys an image - how the head remained in focus with all that motion blur I'll never know.
This was a pure magic birding moment - spoilt for choice at times (Rail or Jack?) No contest in the end, Jack Snipe are not a bird you see every day and other than record shots, I'd never taken a decent picture of one to date!!
The next couple of hours were spent snapping away ad nauseum - whilst feeding, the charcteristic constant 'bobbing' does not make life aasy for sharp images. I had to shoot literally hundred of pics in the gloom, most of which were taken at 1/30sec!
And finally, the two together, nice to contrast the distinctive head patterns in a single shot. The plumage of the Jack was also so much brighter and distinct! With two birds and a long lens, it takes a lot of patience and luck to get them both in the same focal plane.
