As I said at the end of my last post – April has not finished and hopefully more surprises will be in store and sure enough it happened!! Although Blackcaps are a common Spring migrant, like any Sylvia warbler they can be real skulkers at times and getting a good image is extremely frustrating ; the usual results been a blurry image or a view of a disappearing tail as the bird dives down into some impenetrable bush. Well the other day I went out and visited a real scrubby area full of brambles and dense undergrowth – warbler heaven!! Sure enough as soon as I got out of the car, I heard a Blackcap’s rich melodic song which was unmistakeable -they were back !!! Now the only thing I had to do was to photograph it. So I started a slow circle of the area – again Blackcap’s song and unbelievably just 15ft away was a male Blackcap out on its perch singing away !!! I couldn’t believe my luck!!! I lifted the camera and focused on the bird, it had stopped singing but was sitting perfectly still so I took a few frames and held my breath…. it was still there, so I fired off a few more frames before it flew off. WOW …. Male Blackcap in the open brilliant!!! Bird photography can be extremely frustrating at times …. but moments like this make it all worthwhile!!!
