It was a gloomy overcast day at Welwick salt marsh with not much to show for our efforts and ceratinly no images in the bag. We returned to the car and wondered what to do to salvage the day and while deliberating, an alert came in of a Pallas’s warbler at the copse near Easington gas terminal. Being only 4.1 miles away, it was a no brainer, so we set off in search of this tint eastern sprite. Remarkably, it was still showing well when we got there, though very active and almost impossible to get the camera on due to the high magnification and limited field of view if the 600mm with 1.4x attached. I managed to get a few record shots in the bag before it disappeared for a while leaving the onlookers wondering where it could have got to. After 20mins or so, it was spotted in a hedgerow running along the gas works boundary and we managed a few more shots of this jewel of a bird as it moved rapidly along the hedge and out of sight. The light was very low and high ISO was required to maintain a fast enough shutter speed to stop its movement but the ‘denoise’ feature in Lightroom cleaned the images up nicely.

A stunning bird that brightened up the dreary day and fortunately, for once, we happened to be in the right place at the right time and that enabled us to get to the bird within an hour of it being found.

Despite the gloomy overcast weather, we headed to Bishop’s Wood near Selby to see if there were any butterflies to be had. This place can be fantastic for insects and last year, a short visit there yielded white-letter hairstreak, silver-washed fritillary, meadow brown, ringlet, skippers and a whole raft of whites but it was a hit day. Today was warmish but very overcast and things didn’t look promising; only ringlet seemed to be on the wing until a break in the cloud and warm sunshine brought a couple of species out, including this perfect specimen of silver-washed fritillary.

Much less common than it once was, reed bunting can still be found locally to where I live. As the COVID-19 lockdown continues, I’m reinspired to bird locally around my village and I always enjoy photographing the everyday birds I find. This immature male reed bunting was coming to the feeding station located at Anglers CP, a short walk from where I live.