So, it’s Sunday lunchtime and I’m just sitting at the table, shovelling food into my toddler pre-nap and “I got a text” to quote Love Island! I only get texts from a few people, and one of those is top Exmouth birder Matt Knot, so I had to check. Sure enough “FW Casp, Mudbank”, short and sweet. Me “Still there? I’m with the toddler”, looking with anguish to my mother-in-law also having lunch, explaining it’s a lifer. Beep beep “It is, might not stay, it’s flighty”. “Just go Tom, I’ll settle the lad” from Omi or words to that effect, I didn’t have to be asked twice with that kind offer.
Grabbing my camera bag, car keys, wellies, I’m out the door in a jiffy, and 10 mins later I’m walking into Mudbank, heart racing, texting Matt “On my way!”. Through the gate, over the railway, down the muddy path, estuary views start and there’s Matt sat on the bench overlooking the Exe, scope set up, “Hey Tom, it’s roosting with some other gulls on the sandbank by the channel” “brilliant” was my response!
It didn’t take long to get my camera locked on to the sleeping Casp! It was roosting with Herring and lesser black-backed gulls, and a mix of the usual Exe Estuary suspects busy feeding around it; shelduck, turnstone, dunlin, redshank and few pintail ducks bobbing by in the channel. The tide was rising and Matt predicted the gull would have to move soon as the water would be lapping over that sandbank soon.
Can you spot the Caspian gull, view when I first saw it, full frame image, clue head tucked in, very pale/whitish head; OM1, Kowa 1700mm. F9, 1,600th sec, iso 3,200.
Sure enough, it woke up and lifted into flight on it’s long elegant wings with distinct pale underwings, showing that black tail bar, but more than anything that beautiful pale elegant head with the whitish shawl type plumage. The bird came closer and closer, preening, washing, preening some more constantly in the Withycombe Brook channel for at least an hour as the tide rose and pushed it and all the birds closer to the shore and high tide roosts.
All along I was taking photos and video. I have recently acquired a rather incredible Kowa 500mm lens and some adapters, this is part of my Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) problem, we photographers suffer from. It’s a pretty amazing modular system that I got to use not only with my OM System OM1 camera body, but on my Fujifilm GFX set up giving a unique medium format telephoto set up. The adapters I got with it from an ebay buy include a microfourthirds 850mm F9 adapter which equates to 1,700mm on a full frame camera. These distant birds and record shots are exactly what I had been waiting for to use this on. Also with anther adapter it turns into a top Kowa telescope for birding, I can’t wait to do that, but I’ll need to have a proper clear out of gear to get that eyepiece!
OM1, Kowa 1700mm. F9, 1,600th sec, iso 3,200
I also took a few images with my usual Olympus 300mm F4 MZuiko Pro lens and my second body, the OM-D E-M1mkii. It will be interesting to compare the two lenses. I already know that the Kowa will be not as sharp as the Oly 300mm, it’s an incredible piece of glass that lens. See below, and a few of the lovely dunlin feeding nearby. The reach under difficult circumstances is really what I was after and ability to use on other cameras like the Fujifilm GFX.
OM-D E-M1mkii, Olympus 300mm, F4, 1,600th sec, iso 400
The howling wind from Storm Isha made it hard to keep the camera steady, even on a video head and tripod, but using a shutter speed of 1,600th or higher and auto iso I shot a load of images the Casp went about it’s ablutions and activities. Also a bit of video which I link here https://youtu.be/sm2-IEVeW0k. I even snuck down the seawall to get as close to eye level with the bird as best I could, hand holding that big manual focus set up was hard, but I did get some great flight shots and was chuffed, no such thing as bird tracking on this! Eventually the tide pushed all the birds to the mouth of the brook and the Caspian gull flew from view and settled to roost. Matt and I walked round to the road, and the view point and re-found the bird, but it was time for me to head back to my son who would be shortly waking from his nap. A quick drive home and back to being a Dad, chuffed that I have finally seen a Caspian gull after a few misses and many hours on the Exe looking for one.
OM1, Kowa 1700mm. F9, 1,600th sec, iso 2,200
Back at the computer, loading the RAW files into CaptureOne and I’ve got some great records of a lifer! The images needed a small crop, straighten (no water running sideways in my work!), then edit. These were pretty minimal, lift shadows, drop highlights, add a bit of saturation and contrast to try and get some ‘pop’ despite the very very dull grey light and generally brown muddy location! The files from the Kowa lens are good, as you can see, the Oly images definitely hold more detail but it’s lost a little in the lack of reach at the 600mm full frame equivalent. It’s a bit pixel peeper, but it is interesting to compare. I run all my images through Topaz DeNoise AI to just clean some of the noise out the images, I don’t move the slider much as too much de-noise (5-7 ish on the scale) you can end up with very cartoony looking images.
Image wise I really like the sequence I got of the gull lifting into the air after a bit of a wash and doing a full airborne shimmy, it's head almost completely wrapped round shaking off the water. In general I'm eally pleased with what I managed to record, but best of all seeing a bird completely at ease doing it’s thing on the local river, a great encounter. I don’t like to ‘twitch’ far, and since returning from Aus nearly three years ago, I made a new start with my bird species. I am so close to 200 species in Devon now, with the Casp taking me to 193 species. I really need to get out there and find a few easier species this year such as barn owl and spotted flycatcher. If you see me out birding or shooting this year say G’day! Happy birding.
The beast of a Kowa / OM System set up!