A bit more Bittern…boring.

Hmmmm. It’s funny but I’m getting a bit fed up with the Bittern. I want this rubbish weather to dissipate and for us all to be basking in glorious spring sunshine. The spring migrants are a month away and what a joy they will be as they sit atop scrub or tree and sing while I – in shirt sleeves – shoot away on my little Nikon with a decent shutter speed for a change. It’s true though that digital cameras are sophisticated enough to give reasonable results in the darkest of days but couple that with a moving subject and things get bad, really bad.

So for now, I have had to rely on the elusive Bittern as a subject. This can be an uneasy and often unproductive partnership. So while I wait for the Bittern, I used this female Mallard to practise my digiscoping skills on.


A few people have asked me how I get the shots I get. Well, most of the time the shots are pretty poor. I occasionally get a decent image and then hastily run it through Photoshop CC and bingo, better results.

When the Bittern did eventually show itself, I got two shots. One was useless and the other was this…


So this was not bad and considering the light condition I was very happy. But once I sorted out the levels and dropped a bit of unsharp mask on the bird, I ended up with this….

Nikon Coolpix 6500S with Opticron HR66 scope.  ISO 400 – f3.6 – 1/250 sec

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