Surprise Blog post!!! - Now calm down I know you are all excited, so here it is:

Ok, so Lets just say I've had a bad day and leave it at that. I can't even be bothered to start going into anything, but for prosperity it was up there with a swift kicking to the stomach... Now due to this, I found that keeping busy was the order of the day, so I dragged myself over to Bushy park for some 'take my mind off the world' kind of photography, and boy did it help so here we go....

I took some food and drink with me on my walk out into the ferns that seem to have sprung up in a matter of days in Bushy park. I picked a spot, way out in the middle of this area, and sat down for a while. I kept hearing noises behind me, so stood up to see this female Red deer watching me from a distance. (see above) I just managed to grab this shot before she disapeared into the ferns.

I moved position from the ferns, over to one of the lakes that sit in one area of Bushy park. Here I decided to sit and photograph a bird that really does not get much attention; the common coot. Now these birds are very common in the UK and are pretty plain looking, highly sprung and very territorial. They seem to spend their time in perpetual motion, attacking any other coot, or other bird for that matter, that gets near them. Their beady Red eyes don't help them with this aggressive reputation, but I think it gives them a little personality.

Moving on from the lakes, I started to see the starlings coming together, as day started to merge into evening. I find how they flock together fascinating and beautiful to watch, so stopped and tried to capture them as they came in to roost. 

A side note for the image above - I threw a stick at the tree to get the starlings to flock away, and then return to the tree in order to get this image. (they didn't seem to mind too much)

As well as roosting, the starlings spend a lot of their time hanging out with the Deers in the park. As you can see from the images above, the deer don't seem to mind them chilling out on their backs, catching all the flies that hover around the deer all day.

I ended my time in the park with a quick appearance from a Kestrel, hunting, far off in the distance. I had the 400mm lens on the 5DMKIII so was very far away from the subject which was not ideal but I tried my best. These images above are cropped in significantly so the quality is not quite there, but I still like the images nonetheless, and it was great to watch it hunting.

The final image was directed at the sun, creating a little bit of lens flare that I wanted. This was using the 8-15mm F/4 Fisheye, handheld and shows how good this lens is in direct sunlight.

Anyway, surprise post over. Lets hope my next one is under better circumstances. Fingers crossed!!

FIN