Every now and again you get an amazingly confiding bird, a rare event but a complete privilege. Today was one of those days, and the Desert Wheatear at Abberton Reservoir in Essex performed magnificently for all comers. I'd been waiting all week to get out there, mainly as it was an Essex tick, but also knowing how confiding they can be sometimes. Saturday came and it hadn't done the Friday night bunk, so forsaking the patch I went straight there. Too many people, and many of them hanging back for some unknown reason - this often happens even with stupidly tame birds, people are so scared of being labelled as flushers, or even worse - photographers! - that they don't want to be seen to make the first step closer. In the event the bird made the decision for them, and for me, by approaching the crowd so closely that those with large telephotos could do nothing but watch it hop around within minimum focus. I had bins round my neck and never even used them - birding as it should be!

The light was OK (the sun even came out once or twice), the bird was ace and then some, the crowd knew they were onto a good thing and so stress-free, and over the course of an hour and a half I had a brilliant time. 657 shots taken, 190 retained in the first cut, 24 in the second. The best (or what I think are the best at any rate) are in the Thrushes and Chats gallery, and some of the rest are here. All were taken with the Canon 1D Mark IV and the 800mm f5.6 lens on the monopod - quite often at the absolute minimum focussing distance of six metres - I should have brought my extension tubes!

Shetland was incredibly difficult for photography, with high winds and generally poor light being the two largest factors working against me. My keeper rate was incredibly low over the course of the week, indicating that I should have perhaps been a lot more selective about when to press the shutter and when not to have bothered! Two weeks later and I'm still editing! This series is of various Auks in the harbours of Lerwick and Scalloway - presumably the birds were sheltering from the raging conditions. I should probably have been doing the same thing with a nice cup of tea, but for me it was a week of pure birding and photography - these don't come around too often so by and large I went out whatever the weather, making the best of a bad job. These ones, the first three of a Black Guillemot, and the last two of a Common Guillemot, are pretty much the best I could manage in some brief moments of sunshine. I actually got some decent shutter speeds at relatively low ISOs - 800 for the most part. As usual all were taken with the Canon 800mm f5.6 lens and the 1D mk IV body, which I lugged around day after day safe in a waterproof sleeve thing. This pretty much precluded manual focussing as I couldn't operate the ring accurately through it, but without it I would have been sunk, and forced to leave the rig in the car a lot of the time.

I had had OK views of this little stunner a couple of days earlier, but in quite harsh light and not very close. I was amazed to discover a few days later than some enterprising soul had put out a small tub of mealworms and erected a perch just the other side of a small stream. The bird was showing brilliantly, the sort of close you dream of if you carry a large white lens around for little reward day after day. I quickly texted Mick, another keen bird photographer up on Shetland, to tell him the good news. He turned up a little while later, not having received my text message, but clearly in the know about the perch and the worms, and began to set up. I gestured to the Stonechat, sat mere feet away, and said something like "Whoever did this deserves a medal!" He looked surprised. "It was me!" he said! "I did it this morning, and just popped back to see if it was working, looks like it is!". I showed him the texts I had sent....

Anyhow, a brilliant little bird, so full of character, and although not the best light, the four photographers present had an awesome time. I wish I could have stayed longer - Mick was there for another week so check out his webpage later for are bound to be fab images - but there were more birds to be seen.

All images with the Canon 800mm lens and 1D Mark IV body, wide open at f5.6, using ISO 400 with shutter speeds ranging between 1/800 and 1/2000. The final image is with the 1.4x converter attached (for f8), and all used a monopod or tripod bar the penultimate image of the bird perched in twigs. I thought it had gone and had packed up, only for it to suddenly reappear - no time for support, just grab and fire!