Long Distance Long Tailed Duck

This handsome, full adult, Drake Long tailed Duck was photographed today at Sennen Cove. I would love to get closer to this stunning duck (tomorrow hopefully). Please click on the image to enlarge

Long Tail Duck at Carminow Creek

I took the day off today so Lisa and I revisited Carminow Creek or Loe Bar as I prefer. We had a fair days birding and got on to the first when got out of the car, a female Common Scoter sea Duck and male and female Stonechat

. As we walked out to Low Bar we stopped and scanned the sea as I noticed some gull activity some distance out and saw three Black Throated Divers. As we approached the beach and another scan of the sea at high level we nailed a Red Throated Diver. A tip for anyone with problems with Diver ID is to go on the CBWPS ( Cornwall Bird watching Preservation Society) guided walk at Gerrans Bay, St Mawes usually led by Steve Rogers (Swoptics). Back to today and my main objective was to photograph the Long Tail Duck that had eluded me on three previous occasion. As you can see below a window of around one minute allowed me to capture a few average shots,shutter speed was a problem. Species we saw is as follows 1, LT Duck, 3 BT Divers, 1 RT Diver, 1 Common Scoter, 1 King fisher 2, Chough, 1 GC Grebe, 1 Nuthatch, 2 Raven, 1 Kestrel 1 Peacock Butterfly, amongst the rest of the common or garden species. We also saw a pod of Dolphin near Halzephron Cove numbering around 20 individuals. I am not that pleased with the results and put it down to movement. Please click on the image to enlarge

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Loe Pool

We had a trip to Loe Pool today and as we were mobile I took the coolpix and left the D300 and lens at home. Scanning the pool from Loe Bar we had a reasonably close Pochard and further out in the lake we noticed the Long Tail Duck was still in residence, The distance (approx 100 to 150 metres) was to much for even mediocre photography, and armed only with a compact it made life more difficult. The photo's are record shots, and maybe should only be used for the rarer species.