My attempt at coastal bird photography
I am back in Scotland on a sailing trip, and we have found ourselves in Holy Loch Marina near Dunoon, for a couple of nights as the weather is not great, so I am taking the chance to get out and explore the Holy Loch Nature Reserve, that is about a 20 minute walk away and try my best to capture some images and videos of the coastal birds that live in this area.
Now, according to the Holy Loch Nature Reserve website, the best time to visit is 1hr before/after high tide, so naturally the time slot I have, thanks to the weather forecast today, is low tide…not ideal, but I want to make the most of my time here, so head out anyway.
On the way to the reserve, I spot a Great White Egret near the shoreline, not wanting to miss out on this potential photography opportunity, I get my camera ready and go off piste to try and get my first images of the day. I don’t want to scare it off, so I make my way towards it, zigzagging up and down the coast and stopping to take some images and video. I am super happy with the images that I got of the Great White Egret, and (spoiler alert) I think that they are my some of my favourite from the day.
** EDIT 03/05/24 **
After releasing the video on YouTube, one commenter mentioned that what I thought was an Egret was, possibly, an even rarer, leucistic Grey Heron! Having done more research, I think that they are right and this is not an image of a Grey White Egret at all! Lots of things for me to learn, and bird identification is definitely one of them! 😂
I am using my 70-200 f.28 GM ii lens with a 2X teleconverter giving me an equivalent lens of 140-400mm at f5.6, even with the reach of this lens, I did have to put the camera into crop mode to get closer to the Egret, giving me 600mm of reach. Though going into crop mode isn’t a big deal for me, I am looking forward to getting my hands on the 200-600mm G lens, so I get even more reach!
After spending time with the Egret, I head back to the road and carry onto the Holy Loch Nature Reserve. Here, I follow a gravel pathway through some woodland, and get to a brick hide where there are some well stocked bird feeders that have attracted an absolute load of small birds like Siskins, Robins, Blue Tits, Goldfinch, Greenfinch and Chaffinches. These birds were an absolute joy to watch and photograph, and I spent a lot of time here just taking it all in.
At the hide, there is also a view out to the coastal marshes, however, as I was here at low tide, there was not much in the way of activity here. So I headed out further along the path and down into the marsh land to see if I could find any other wildlife.
There was not much in the marshy area, but as I got closer to the shoreline, there were a few Canada Geese as well as a pair of Greylag Geese. After getting some images of these, I headed along the to try and get some images of the Oystercatchers and the other birds along the waterline.
This didn’t exactly go to plan, the birds were all very far away, and would move further down when they felt I was too close. As the ground here was quite soft and muddy, and I didn’t want to end up being ‘that’ person who got suck and had to be rescued, I headed back to the road and the marina where I got a lovely encounter with an Oystercatcher and what I think is a juvenile Shag.
Having spent the rest of the day dodging heavy downpours, just after 7pm I headed back out to the nature reserve to, once again, capture some images of the birds there. This time I was a bit closer to the optimum time to visit, however, I was a still a bit late thanks to the weather delaying me heading out. As I got closer, I could see the seabirds along the water line to headed to them first. I did have a bit more luck this time, but still wasn’t able to get as close as I would have liked to the Oystercatchers. I did also spot some Teal here which was pretty cool as I have not seen them before, you’ll have to watch my YouTube video for them as I was unable to get an image of them before they moved on.
I also saw a Little Egret, which does put into prospective how big the Great White Egret that I saw this morning was. It flew in, and I was able to get a series of images of that which I am very happy with, but it did not stay around for long, so I headed back to the reserve and the hide I was in earlier.
My luck with the birds didn’t get any better here, I think I was too late in the day for the finches that were swarming the feeders earlier and hardly saw anything. Just as I was about to leave though, a female Mallard Duck waddled in and started to feed from a puddle under the feeders, which was a nice surprise to see.
After she headed off back into the woods, I packed up and headed back to the marina, just as I got back, it started to hammer it down, however there were a pair of Oystercatchers right near to the security gate. As I was not sure if I would get this opportunity again, I whipped my camera back out and got my favourite Oystercatcher images from the day and the whole trip.
All in all, I had a fantastic day at the Holy Loch Nature Reserve, even if I did spend most of the day photographing non-coastal birds! Seeing all the Siskins and other kinds of finch was a superb experience, and I am very happy with all my images and memories captured from this day.
If you do happen to find yourself in Sandbank or Dunoon, I do recommend a visit – ideally 1hr before/after high tide!