Digi-dslr-scoping

I tried digiscoping with my DSLR today. I borrowed a friends 50mm f1.8 lens and stuck it to my zoom via the Swaro DCA adapter.

First impressions are that it's very difficult to focus! You have to set the lens to manual focus, which means you have to be spot on with the scopes focus while viewing through the camera. Difficult to do, and follow the bird, and to get a sharp image!

Anyway, here are my efforts from Cley today. Some of which I'm well chuffed with, even though some are slightly out of focus.

I also tried digiscoping flying raptors today. I think this method could work really well with practice...

Roosting Gulls

The Broom gull roost with the reflection of 'the mighty' Sandy Heath transmitter.

Tuftie family at dusk

Tufted Duck against a Broom dusk.

Confiding Hobby

Dead chuffed with these! This Hobby was posing nicely this evening, just down the road from my house.

BOPs - Absolutely cosmic!

Faster than a speeding bullet...

Fan-bloody-tastic birds, aren't they? Hobbies are one of my faves. This one was just round the corner from my house. Another first-summer, which looks very adult-like, until it speads its tail.

The birds of Britain

Found this on another blog and got very amused!

Birding by hot springs...

This is the way to go birding! I'm scoping a Black-chested Buzzard Eagle up on a crag above the hot springs of Termas de Papallacta in Ecuador. Ahh - happy days! Thanks to Colin and Anne for the photo.

Colour-ringed Gull

Shite image, but after all this time watching Yellow-legged Gulls at Broom, I've finally found a colour-ringed one! This one has a green ring with PCMW on its left leg, which makes it from the Ebro Delta in Spain, I think. I've sent the details away so hopefully we'll know a bit more about it very soon...

Another Beds first!

But this time not a bird! A Grey Seal turned up at Kempston Mill on Friday. This amazing news only got to naturalists because Dave Barnes popped down to his local patch this morning and saw this thing staring back at him!

With more and more records coming from various points along the Great Ouse in Cambridgeshire in recent years, this perhaps isn't such a surprise first. By our reckoning, the Ouse is navagable all the way from the Wash, right up to Kempston. Our guess is the Seal has swam through the lock-gates, following the boats up river until it can get no further. This perhaps bears some credence as there was a chap with a small dingy and outboard motor going up and down this stretch today. Every time he put his motor on, the Seal popped up behind as if following it.

There was also a fishing match on the same stretch, and although amusing to see, I don't think the anglers were too impressed with an over-sized Otter zipping around their stretch of river!