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April 28th
Dorney Wetlands
A dull, grey morning produced a couple of wheatear, possibly left over from yesterday and a male whinchat which looked like the one from the sewage farm on Tuesday. So nothing new.
An afternoon visit, spoilt by two large packs of semi-controlled dogs, produced nothing new so I spent the last of the light trying to get a photo of whichat on the south side of Monument hill. Leaving, as the light dulled out completely I had a quick scan of the islands on my way to the car park and found the two turnstone quite close to the edge on one of the recently cleared islets in front of the swiss-cheese screens south-east of the black bridge. They were pretty active and I had to use ISO 400 to have any chance of "freezing" them - thus the grain.
This is a good county record since there are rarely more than 3 of 4 spring records in Berkshire. This is the third year running for turnstone at this site, making DW the most reliable site in the county for these colourful little waders!
Note: view the "Status bar" (View menu) to see a log of the birds today
CAMERA : E995V1.6
METERING : SPOT
MODE : A SHUTTER : 1/33sec
APERTURE : F5.1 EXP +/- : -0.7
FOCAL LENGTH : f31.0mm eyepiece 20x
IMG ADJUST : STANDARD FOCUS AREA : RIGHT
SENSITIVITY : ISO400 WHITEBAL : AUTO
SHARPNESS : OFF DATE : 28.04.2005 19:07
QUALITY : FULL FINE SATURATION : +1