Skip to content

Spring arrives

Alex Roddie
Alex Roddie
1 min read
DSCF7165

After a stormy but mild winter, spring is returning to the Lincolnshire Wolds. Today I went for a walk through Gunby Park and saw a robin hunting for its next meal.

I hadn’t been looking to do any wildlife photography. My attention was on the snowdrops bursting through the ground, and the warm sunshine painting light over the landscape, but as I stood on the edge of the cemetery I noticed a robin swoop between the branches of a thorn tree and alight, bobbing, on a fence post.

DSCF7169

I’d fitted my vintage, manual-focus 200mm lens to my camera and was busy taking telephoto pictures. It just so happened that the lens was already set to the correct focus – no autofocus here – so I swung round and fired off a burst of shots as I watched the bird peering intently in the direction of the meadow.

Half a second after I captured the last picture in the sequence, the robin was gone and had snatched his prize from mid air. I’m very pleased with the image I managed to capture, and if you click through to the image on Flickr and zoom to full size you can actually see the fly in the left of the frame, just before it got grabbed by the robin.

DSCF7163_2
Click to view the full-quality image on Flickr

It’ll be a while yet before the last of the cold weather is behind us, but this afternoon it felt like the first moments of spring had arrived in the Wolds.

Notesnature

Alex Roddie

Happiest on a mountain. Writer, story-wrangler, digital and film photographer. Editor of Sidetracked magazine (I make the words come out good).

Comments


Related Posts

Members Public

The long microseason tail of a fantastic winter

Late March is always a strange time of year for me. I think I become more aware of the tension in the landscape as winter peels back and spring tries to do its thing, and this tension manifests itself in various subtle ways. For me it's about microseasons.

The long microseason tail of a fantastic winter
Members Public

Creative Freedom with the John Muir Trust

Calling writers, photographers, and artists! The John Muir Trust are asking for artists to submit their creative vision for wild places to be considered for their Creative Freedom exhibition. How does 'freedom for wild places' inspire you creatively? What is your creative response to the call of the

Creative Freedom with the John Muir Trust
Members Public

The late 2023 social media burnout

At this time of year I typically start to feel pretty burnt out regarding social media, and 2023 is no different.

The late 2023 social media burnout

Mastodon