Category

Birdlife

Location

River Tone, Taunton, UK

Gear

Canon 1DX, Canon 500mm mounted on a Tripod

Description

Sand Martins are normally to be found nesting in sandy cliffs and river banks but in Taunton there is a small colony nesting in the drains in the concrete walls of a storm drain. Late in 2019, Graffiti was painted on these walls so in the Summer of 2020, I returned to the location with a view to photographing the nesting birds in this rather unique urban site. This was a challenge as I had to maintain my distance to avoid disturbance and the storm drain was in deep shade for most of the day. Also I had to rely on my reactions to catch the birds leaving or arriving at the holes as I do not use trigger sensing devices. I had more failures than successes but eventually I managed to capture the scene in this image. A really fast shutter was required to freeze the Sand Martin flying out of the hole. Setting 1/4000sec at f4 ISO1600

Photographer

Robin Morrison

Social Media

Twitter: robinmmorrison

Facebook: Robin Morrison

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