I was in need of a bit of fresh air this afternoon, especially as we had a window of a few hours between one stormy weather system and likely the next one.  So I bowled down to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust site at Arundel to see what was about.  In the sunshine, it was surprisingly quiet on the wildfowl front and I spent over two and a half hours hoping the kingfishers would appear on a convenient branch over the water and that a snipe would break cover from behind some grass.  Well, the snipe stayed resolutely stationary spending all that time without taking a step from its position of cover.  The kingfisher did eventually appear but as a glistening jewel on a high branch in the late afternoon light too far away to take any reasonable pics.  It compounded the issue by streaking past my hide low and just out of reach.  Great to watch but not the best photo opp because it passed straight by the base of ‘my’ perch without a pause.  Such is the lot of the wildlife photographer…

But at the last gasp of the light after the sun disappeard being the high bluff that skirts the reserve, a water rail appeared in from of the hide.  I managed to grab a few frames which turned out ok.  That’s the first proper sighting I’ve had of a water rail beyond seeing one through binoculars at tiny dot distances.  These are really shy birds and this one is exhibiting typical ‘skulking in the reeds at the water’s edge’ behaviour.  A fine ending to a refreshing afternoon.  

I’d have been really made up had I not realised that my camera was set to a basic jpeg quality setting rather than it’s normal ‘raw’ high quality.  Bit of a ‘slaps forehead’ moment when I imported the frames into Lightroom when I got home.  Ho hum.  Live and learn!

Gear: Nikon D500 with 200mm-500mm f/5.6 lens.  Taken at 500mm with f5/6, ISO 3200 and 1/400s shutter speed with sun behind the hills.