Garden Kite

Much of my day was spent getting the garden in order. Plugging a hole in fence caused by the local Badger, Cutting the grass, de-weeding etc with some time spent sky watching. This resulted in 4 House Martins and three Swifts, both being my first for the year, however, with a Lesser Whitethroat singing briefly. I thought this was a garden tick but my records shows I heard one back on 2014 so this represented just the second garden record.

However the days hightlight was the very long over due Red Kite which drifted in from the west and continued steadily east and was gone within a minute.

Whenever I'm in the garden I always have my Bins and Camera to hand to I was quickly able to get a few record shots. We pleased with this.

A quick review of the new Compact Flash card I recently purchased; the Lexar 128GB 160MB/s 1066x UDMA 7 Professional.

I've so far only used this on the Waxwing in the previous post but the download to PC is mega quick. I usually go with Sandisk, and they are very quick, but the good reviews of this card and it being somewhat cheaper I thought I'd give it a try. My previous largest Compact Flash card is the SanDisk Extreme PRO 64GB 160MB/s UDMA 7.

The 80 or so images I took f the Waxwing were at the largest RAW with the Largest JPEG alongside, I find reviewing JPEGS easier than RAW so I have these as well. These 80 images were downloaded in less than 15 seconds so the transfer rate is lightening quick, though must be considered that my laptop is super fast as well with 16GB RAM.

So far I thought this download was the fastest I've had to date and with the new laptop I shouldnt have any of the issues I had last year when I was in Israel when the Old Laptop just couldnt download the extremely large file sizes from a 1DX, Computer Said No.

I look forward to using this card.

Waxwing invasion; well not quite

This winter was not one of those winters that saw a Waxwing invasion with very few being seen around the country. Locally it was looking like it was going to be very difficult to get onto the local year list and we were looking to see what the end of the year may bring us. A brief lived hope came when one was seen in Shoebury a month ago but was not seen subsequently. Then one was seen around the Alton Road area of Oakengrange Drive in Southend. This sprung new hope but nothing was seen by those who visited. I had often driven along Oakengrange this winter as it has been berry central. Then a few days ago the Waxwing reappeared and went onto to show to most who went to see it, albeit it would disappeard off somewhere for long periods of time.

I had the fortune of the bird being there when I made mnmy first visit, I have been laid up with Kidney Stones for the past week and one of the rare times I was pain free I got out.

The past few days the weather has been pretty damn grey, often with thick fog, and today did see grey skies which are not the best for photography with these shots being taken with higher than normal ISO's to just get a fast enough shutter speed, lots of stopping down was also required. Still given the conditions these are not to bad.