Sunrise was at 4.54 am. I rolled out of bed, pulled on some jeans and a short sleeved shirt. On impulse I pulled on my walking boots, grabbed my camera and headed out. I pulled into the carpark at Whitesheet a few minutes later, parked up and set off on a short walk to the heathland.
The light was still quite poor and there was considerable cloud cover. I had to set the ISO at 12,800 initially, to ensure a fast enough shutter speed to capture sharp images of moving wild life. After an hour all I had been able to photograph was a distant stonechat and linnet. The light was improving and I lowered my ISO to 6,400 without suffering a deterioration in shutter speed.
I was beginning to think that this was going to be one of those unproductive sessions. My wildlife photography can be like that. In those instances all you can do is write it off to experience. But then it occurred; a moment of serendipity when by being in the right place, the right moment came along. Nearly two hours after setting foot on the heath.
I was aware of movement in the bush next to me and a lot of twittering. I waited patiently. Finally after several minutes not one, but two Dartford Warblers appeared. They moved about constantly in and out of shot, but they didn’t fly off and weren’t spooked by my presence.
At 7.07am I pulled back into my driveway. The house was still quiet. I fed the dog and the cat, made myself a cup of coffee and a bowl of muesli and downloaded the shots from my old-fashioned DSLR to my laptop. These are a few of the pics:
Stephen's Wildlife 