Stonechat Madness.

 On one of my regular longer walks from home, I often encountered a pair of Stonechat which were particularly approachable. To be fair, this is often the case with this species, but this pair were even more approachable than usual. In the middle of January, with little else to photograph, I decided to carry my camera with a stronger telephoto on it, just to see if I could get a small set of photos of these delightful birds. Often when I try doing this with a particular bird, I get to the site and find they are not showing, but these birds were not going to let me down like that.

After a short bit of stalking them, I found I was able to get even closer than I had expected, especially with the female bird. I ended up getting nearly 100 photos of them, and believe me, that is a lot of photos from just one session for me!!

Male Stonechat.

Female Stonechat.

I enjoyed myself so much that a couple of days later I went to the same area again, and once again this pair of birds performed for me.

With no other birds worth photographing, I then took David there to have a go. I once again took my camera with me, and again came back with many pictures. This time the skies were a bit brighter. In fact at times, almost too bright.

Of course, with all this fun, Lisa then wanted to have a go, so by now the birds and I were almost on first name terms!!

However, they were not that surprised to see me again, and fortunately, they once again excelled in their new modelling careers. I guess at the end of all this I will not have to photograph another Stonechat. Although, given the right opportunity, I'm sure I will again very soon.

What made this day even more special, was that we also saw the Humpback Whale that had spent several weeks off the Sussex coast. Despite seeing several Humpback Whales in Antarctica, it was even more special seeing one here, where they are not so expected. It was far too way out to sea to photograph, but a great memory for both of us to see such a fabulous animal on our home patch.