Tuesday 21 September 2010

Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, Cleveland


Apologies for awful record images, but as this is a UK (and world!) tick for me I can't resist...

Taken this morning just after nine a.m, Phil and I had had an easy drive down to Teesside with little delay from commuters. News came on the pager as we hit the A1185, and a few minutes and a short walk (quick-step) we were enjoying distant views of this sibe mega. Good light provided great scope views, but it was on the edge of reality for the camera - images here are with the 500mm & 2.0 & 1.4 extenders stacked, with high ISO to try and give a reasonable shutter speed. One for digi-scopers me thinks!


You can just about make-out-able on the soft images is the rustier cap, white supercilium. A bit of a pec sand/ruff/dotterel combo... Nice size comparison with redshank, dunlin and curlew too.

All this before a shift at work: perfect!

2 comments:

Ghost of Stringer said...

Good to hear you weren’t one of those early morning flushers...

I get the impression (2nd hand mind you) that you'd have got much better photo's if some idiots hadn't very kindly booted it early on in their selfish attempts to get closer.... and closer...... and even closer !!

I think we’ll just have to see who’s got the best pics to establish the culprits.

luckily my pics are utterly shite !!

Stuart Price said...

That's not fair. It's supposed to be fairly common where I am but has yet to make my list........