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Upton Warren Worcestershire Wildlife Trust

Drive a couple of miles out of Droitwich towards Bromsgrove on your right is Worcestershire's premier bird reserve. There are three lakes, the Sailing Lake and two owned by the WWT, the Salt Flashes and the fresh water Moors Pools. Ideal for me as they make a comfortable 25 mile bicycle ride from my home.

Shell Ford - midway.

I recently visited both lakes to try out my new camera, Fujifilm XT-1 with 55-200mm f3.5/4.6 lens. This time I went by car as I took quite a bit of kit.

Alas sold now as I use Canon and Sony

The XT-1 is an excellent camera but wildlife, especially birding, is it's weak point. Macro work with the Fuji 60mm f2.4 macro lens is fine, but currently the 55-200mm lens is the longest XF lens although a longer lens is on Fuji roadmap fot 2nd half of 2016. I am saving up to buy a used Canon 7D and hope to borrow a 150-500 Sigma to see if this is a better and probably cheaper birding option.

UPDATE. As a lot of my photography is of nature so I reluctantly switched back to DSLR and now use Canon 80D with collection of lenses including 70-300mm L, Sigma 100mm f2.8 Macro and Sigma 150-600mm.

For travelling light I have Sony 6300 with kit standard zoom and 55-210mm but wonders of wonders Sigma have made an adapter for Canon EF to E mount and all the previous mentioned lenses will function on 6300 albeit the AF is a little slower and less certain. Still 4k video with these lenses all for less than an extra £200 can’t be bad!

February 2019 - Equipment update. I have now upgraded my Canon 80D to a new 5D Mk iv. Also at the 2018 Bird Fair in August 2018 I had purchased a Canon M50, an impulse buy at the time. The Sony kit was traded in to support the purchase.

This is an ideal time as the Avocets have returned, I counted 20, but when editing my photos four turned out to be Shellducks.

Click on following button to see original photos in Flickr

Birds Seen on the day

  1. Buzzard
  2. Canada Goose
  3. Cetti's Warbler (yes seen as well as heard!)
  4. Cormorant
  5. Great Crested Grebe
  6. Shoveller
  7. Moorhen
  8. Tufted Duck
  9. Black Headed Gull
  10. Great Tit
  11. Blue Tit
  12. Hedge Sparrow
  13. Reed Bunting
  14. Coot
  15. Blackbird
  16. Avocet
  17. Herring Gull
  18. Lapwing
  19. Shellduck
  20. Teal
  21. Mallard

Oh and a brown rat!

This was writtent as an exercise to familiarise myself with Adobe Slate