{"id":15888,"date":"2026-07-19T20:21:44","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T19:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=15888"},"modified":"2026-07-19T20:21:45","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T19:21:45","slug":"sand-martins-in-shipley-11-july-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/sand-martins-in-shipley-11-july-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Sand Martins in Shipley. 11 July 2026."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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These are a few from a short walk along the Leeds Liverpool canal from Fox Corner, Otley Road to just past the Dock Lane swing bridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The header image is of a Sand Martin leaving its nest which is in a ground water drain pipe in what remains of the wall of the old Glenroyal cinema.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As usual you can tap\/touch\/click on an image to see it in better quality in the carousel gallery with an\u00a0i<\/em>\u00a0for more information. And if you like what you see please click on one or more of the\u00a0Share\u00a0<\/em>buttons at the bottom. Share it with Shipley social groups.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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On this little walk I was out to play Ingress<\/a>, a game I started playing in December 2013. I have had a couple of breaks from the game and recently started taking an interest again. I am not expecting to be travelling all over the country again or waiting for a call to action at 2:00am, we’ll see. Perhaps I will try top get fellow retirees interested in weekday fielding exercises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The location was also chosen to fit with checking out the site where Sand Martins have been nesting. I had expected them to have all fledged but several nests were still in use. The photo here, not the header image, shows it leaving the nest with what looks like a long insect wing possibly from a Damselfly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For these two photos I used the camera’s pre-burst capture function. A half-press of the shutter starts the camera “recording”, a full press then writes the shots from 1\/2 second before the full press to whenever you take your finger off the shutter. Back home it was enlightening to see that the default frame from when I fully pressed the shutter had no bird in shot. I had to go back 4 or 5 frames to get the bird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I need more practice, there is no chance for the auto focus to latch onto the bird, so I need to manually set the focus to a small distance in front of the exit. It would also have been better if I had my tripod with gimbal head. Next time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also have:<\/p>\n\n\n\n