Yellow wagtailfinally managed to get close enough and in light that wasn't to harsh to enable me to get some reasonable shots of this bright little bird, Northam, N.Devon Yellow wagtails have been in my sights for a week now and having five turn up on my local patch I was almost certain I would get a shot reasonably easy....WRONG!

The yellows were in an area where there are also hundreds of Pied and white wagtails and would be almost constantly chased and would fly a short distance to settle and have the same thing happen again. Of course not too much of a problem for the bird but getting close enough for a shot was impossible. 

Evenings seemed to be the best chance of a photo as there were usually less walkers and dog to add to the problem. Over a period of four days I tried slowly closing the distance by creeping up on them which was difficult as they were quite edgy and seemed to have  tolerance level of about thirty yards before they would fly a little further away.

My next approach would be wait in the car for one to fly to an area where I could slowly drive up to and shoot through the window, the birds did occasionally come up but even getting close enough with the car (which normally works a treat if you approach slowly) did not work and off they would fly again. 

On Thursday evening I was watching from the car again and it was blowing a gale. The flooded pool looked as though there were waves as the wind was so strong. This wind was creating a foam which would blow to the edge where all the wagtails seemed to be. It became clear that the air bubbles had trapped all the dead insects (flies and midge)s and therefore making rich pickings for the birds. The following day the wind was still strong and the birds were still feeding on the waters edge, this time whenever a yellow wagtail was chased off it would immediately run back down to the food source, this was just the sort of luck I needed so I quickly got out my chair hide and positioned myself on the waters edge. Within minutes I had the birds within about 10m and managed plenty of shots, the problem this time was the harsh sunlight which is not good for photographing birds, especially canary yellow ones! I could do little about this as i could not position myself any different without actually sitting in the water.

The following morning I awoke early and drove straight back down there as it was still windy the birds were yet again congregating in the same general area, once agin sat in my hide but this time the sun was lower in the sky and behind me so I finally managed a few decent shot!