A free couple of hours seemed an opportunity for a walk along the seafront prior to its closure in the weeks ahead looking for/at Purple Sandpipers. Chilly and very grey but the low tide ensured at least some birds would be feeding. The numbers here seem to have dropped off since late autumn whilst the other Hampshire resident flock at Barton-on-sea seems to have grown to record(?) proportions with 29 today. So, today, just six rather distant birds and three much closer. Single Cormorant and two each of Rock Pipit and Oystercatcher were about it.
The Rock Pipit below was a massive crop and taken at 200 ISO and 1/40 and 1/60 second and 600mm FFE, whilst upping the ISO and being a slightly larger and closer birds meant the PURSA's were just a large crop with more pixels on the birds. Proximity and blue skies are the new lens's friends!! Coupled with the GX9 it's never going to create great images but more than adequate for the blog or embedding in notes. Should be OK for butterflies and dragonflies but maybe not quite enough for damsels. Definitely back to the 60mm macro for smaller stuff.
Sadly these guys are outside my 5k square so don't 'count' whereas yesterday's four Collared Dove do!!
