{"id":9684,"date":"2024-05-21T14:26:55","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T14:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=9684"},"modified":"2024-05-21T14:26:57","modified_gmt":"2024-05-21T14:26:57","slug":"denso-marston-19-may-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/denso-marston-19-may-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Denso Marston, 19 May 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Sunday walk around Denso Marston Nature Reserve with my cameras. One with a macro lens on the left strap, the other with 150-600mm with a 1.4x converter on the right strap, and binoculars in the middle. For those wanting to be adorned in a similar way I use an Optech Triple Camera Carrier<\/a>. (Link to Amazon.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tapping on any of the images below should load it in better quality in a gallery carousel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Female Goosander<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Male Goosander<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Goosander chicks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the first things spotted on getting down to the river were Goosander, I was surprised to see males. I had thought that they left the area leaving the females to bring up the chicks on their own, but a bit more reading says that this happens in June. The chicks were cute. Initially there were 3 on the rock but as I watched more climbed up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mating Damselflies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Azure Damselfly<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Azure Damselflies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Azure Damselfly<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Large Red Damselfly<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Banded Demoiselle Damselfly<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Female Banded Demoiselle Damselfly<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Female Banded Demoiselle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Crane Fly<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Mallard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Moorhen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Tadpoles<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At the pond there were lots of Azure Damselflies flitting around, also some Large Red Damselflies and Banded Demoiselle. The pond also had Mallard, Moorhen and quite a few of Tadpoles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Great Spotted Woodpecker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Great Spotted Woodpecker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Great Spotted Woodpecker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Great Spotted Woodpecker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Great Spotted Woodpecker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Evidence of Woodpecker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A little further up river I started to hear the incessant call of Great Spotted Woodpecker chicks. I walked slowly and quietly but the noise didn’t stop as others came past so I was reasonably confident I would get to see something. The chicks weren’t poking their heads out but I did see the adults going in with insects and coming out after collecting “mess”. A little further along a fallen tree showed evidence of the Woodpeckers having been digging for food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Field Mustard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Micropterix & Field Mustard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Red Campion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Cow Parsley & Field Mustard?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I like the auto-focus on the cameras but on the R7 it doesn’t always do what I want it to. It can jump around and mean that I have to reject lots of shots. Add to this that the camera can take 15 or so shots per second, and it does it silently, there is no shutter clatter to disturb wildlife or to tell me to take my finger off the button, so quite a few can be almost identical. When I first saw the Goosander chicks there were 3 on a rock looking cute, so I took loads of photos. Then another climbed up, more shots; then another, then another! It is far too easy to get home after a couple of hours with 1500 images, it can take quite a while to review and reject down to a sensible number. I have been quite generous this session, 32 photos, normally I would try to get it down to one per species, around 20. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The focus jumping around can mean that I get shots of things I hadn’t noticed – like, what I think, is a Micropterix moth on a bare Field Mustard. An interesting thing about these moths is that they “decided” not to follow all the other butterflies and moths that developed a curled tongue for feeding but have jaws for chewing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Orange Tip on Vetch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Orange Tip on Red Campion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Alder Leaf Beetle?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Blue Bottle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Two Spot Ladybird<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Guelder Rose (Viburnum opulus)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The 105mm macro lens lets me focus at very short range with the idea of getting close enough to fill the frame with little things. The downside is that not everything lets you do that. The above selection, plus the Tadpoles, are the ones taken with the macro lens. All the other photos were taken with the 150-600mm lens with the 1.4x converter attached. All except one of the photos of the Damselflies were taken with the camera handheld at its maximum zoom of 840mm. On a crop sensor camera that is equivalent to 1300mm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Sunday walk around Denso Marston Nature Reserve with my cameras. One with a macro lens on the left strap, the other with 150-600mm with a 1.4x converter on the right strap, and binoculars in the middle. For those wanting to be adorned in a similar way I use an Optech Triple Camera Carrier. (Link […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[154,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-denso","category-paul"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/R7_C2278.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3kGoX-2wc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9684"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9719,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9684\/revisions\/9719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}