Last Thursday, a friend and I went to Lemsford Springs as he had visited a few days before and was happy enough with his photos to want to revisit. Weather was mainly cloudy with showers forecast, some heavy.

The attractions are the Green Sandpipers and Snipe that are mainly winter visitors but it rapidly became clear that photograpahy would be challenging, what with the weather, coupled with the birds maintaining a distance.

Firstly, a Kingfisher made a brief visit

and eventually, one Snipe started to feed with it's feeding circle bringing it close enough for a shot.

That encouraged one Green Sandpiper to move closer. although still distant.

But the star of the show, although still distant was a Stoat. Adding a 1.4 converter to the 200-800 lens helped but with the poorish light, an aperture of f13 gave high ISO readings but, having only photographed a Stoat once before, and many moons ago, it was worth a punt.

In the afternoon, upon recommendation, we visited the Watercress Wildlife Association reserve at St.Albans. Ring-necked Parakeets were resident which my friend had never photographed before. Well, he failed this time too. In fact neither of us took a single photo as there was nothing showing.

An early return home was the answer!!!!