Visit 15th Jan 2023
I have been meaning to do a photographic project on a heronry in a park in South London for 2 or 3 years now but for various reasons I have not had the time to see it through.
I decided to visit Kelsey Park, near Bromley for a quick walk around and see how active the heronry was at the moment. I also took a new Canon R7 camera body out with me to give it an initial test run with my Canon RF 100-500mm L IS lens. Light was a bit on the poor side so a good test for the new set-up.
The park is a busy and popular park with a large lake in which is an island with the heronry. (I will take some general pictures of the area on my next visit). There is plenty of other bird and wildlife in the park which gives plenty of scope for some urban wildlife photography.
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| Egyptian Goose |
As I walked around the lake there were plenty of ducks and geese on the water including Egyptian geese, tufted ducks, mallards, coots, little grebes and moorhens. I stopped and watched a male Egyptian goose having a wash which was a great subject to take my first photos with the new camera.
It wasn't long before I was standing by the heronry already occupied by several herons. It was obvious that nest building was already underway with birds bringing back sticks to repair / build nests for this year. I counted approx. 13 nests at various stages of construction.
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| Stick hunting |
Once at the nest the stick are carefully placed in the nest structure and finely adjusted until the birds are happy with the position. The pair also use this process to strengthen their bond and carry out some courtship display.
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| Careful positioning of sticks |
In a couple of the nests there was one bird hunkered down sitting in the nest with just their head visible. Probably a bit early to be sitting on eggs, more likely waiting for the next stick delivery.After an hour or so things quietened down with most of the birds just hanging around their nest site so I decided to have a wander around the rest of the park and give the camera a further workout. Here are a few pics of a few other birds.
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| Wood Duck |
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| Wren |
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| Tufted Duck |
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| Little Egret |
As you walk around the park you hear the constant squawking of ring-necked parakeets. Towards the end of the lake there are a few older trees where the parakeets are preparing holes for nesting. All in all a good morning. I shall now try and visit on a regular basis and document the progress of the heronry this year.The Canon R7 performed well and better than expected in low light conditions. Not quite as good as the R5 but not far off with the additional benefit of extra reach due to the 1.6x crop sensor. I also tried a few shots with the RF 1.4x extender which also performed remarkably well.
