Grey Wagtail

I took a wander up to High Dam in the Lake District today looking to do some landscape and ended up taking this. The light was bad for landscape so I ended up finding a stream with an interesting pattern of channeled waterfalls, I was peering through the viewfinder when this Wagtail came into the shot looking for lunch in the stream. I had the 70-210 on which didn't quite give the reach, fortunately this bird didn't seem to mind me rustling around to get a 1.7TC on.

Hi Paul

A very nice portrait of this bird, well framed and with good colour and the habitat is shown well. I might have tried for a slightly more eye level view of the bird but I appreciate this might not have been possible in the conditions.

You have done well here considering you didn't set out with the intention of bird photography.

cheers

Sean

Lovely colourful image (with flash?), lower viewpoint would be nice but a fine image nonetheless.

John

Cracking natural hist photo, Paul. It's always good to hear a story of the one that DIDN'T get away when things aren't quite going your way. My only suggestion is to try a crop at the top, to do away with the brown OOF leaf.

Dave

I agree with the above - a nice shot but a lower angle would have made it excellent.

Hi Paul
very nice picture of the Bird in it's enviroment.
John
Aberdeen

A lower viewpoint may have helped, but I really like your posted image!

David

nice environmental shot. I like the contrast of the bright yellow and green on the dark rocks. I think taking a little off the top would help so the bird isn't right on the centerline.

Thanks for the comments folks. I was thinking 'lower view' when taking what turned out to be a series of shots. Unfortunately a combination of not daring to move in case I scared it off and the potential of falling down a waterfall from an already precarious position prevented this

John - no flash was used, the light coming into the scene was hazy shafts of sunlight through the nearby trees. I have a portrait shot of this bird lit by a single shaft of light that also has a bit of a 'flash' feel about it. I'll post this later when my '24hrs' is up.

Here are the techs that I forgot to post - D200, 70-200VR @ 340mm with 1.7TC, 1/350sec @ F/5.6, ISO 800.

Nice one Paul, I have a couple of these on a river near me and I can never get low enough either otherwise I would spook them

Terry

I like it,we have a couple of these on my local river and would be very pleased to get an image like this

A beauty of a shot Paul. Maybe would have liked to see a catchlight in the eye but this is barely noticeable due to the size of the eye. A very minor nit on a very dynamic shot.

Regards Chris.
www.c-m-l.com

Like the pose Paul. The bird stairing down into the water and the rest of the enviro.
Would prefer to see the bird at your level and a catch light woluld have been nice but as Chris says birds eye is small anyway.
Major

Very nice.I like the contrast between pale grey bird and the dark grey rocks.
The small area of water in the bottom corner very much adds to the overal images appeal IMO.