Like most wildlife photographers, there are certain species that appeal to me more than others and for many years, i was keen to see a Bluethroat.  I guess it may be because they are a Briish rarity thats looks easy to identify, yet still interesting and a bit of a challenge.  A few years ago, I first saw them in Belguim, and since then, I have manged to see them in a few other european countries.  My most recent sighting was at Christmas 2015 during a lovely visit to Spain where we saw a few birds, but yet none was either close enough or still enough for anything but very poor record shots that should be deleted.

Indeed, each time I have seen a Bluethroat, it has been too far away to get anything other than a very poor record shot.  Therefore, for quite some time, i have been keen to see them again and improve my images.  Allthough, I know the species of birds, plants, mamals, etc. that I would like to photograph either for the first time, or in some cases again, I guess Bluethroat has been very high on my target list of species that I would like to photograph when the opputunity arose.

When I saw online that there was a lovely Bluethroat at one of the wildlife trust reserves in Lincolnshire, I immediately thought that this bird could be my opputunity.  I don't like big twitches and lots of people, I understand why people go, why people like lists, and why they are very popular.  But, they are often not good for the bird involved, and usually photographers and bird watchers get in each others way, which means that they dont usually lead to good photographs.

I resisted the thought of jumping into my car and driving the 50 minutes to see it, and decided to wait and see if the bird was going to wait around for a few days.  Often after about a week, the crowds of people will shrink, which leads to better photographic opputunities, it also leads to more time spent watching the bird in hopefully a much less stressed state.  Last week, a friend of mine paid a visit to the site and reported back that it was indeed a great bird and that photography was definately possible.  Therefore, I recently decided it was time for me to pay a visit, and started to  look at my comitments along with the weather forecasts.  When I visited, there were about a dozen people waiting for the bird to show, and within a few minutes it flew down onto the grass next to the reeds where it had been hiding out of sight.  This was not a big crowd for a bird of this rareity particuarly given its striking colours.

I waited a few hours during which it showed a few times, sometimes at quite close quarters and I rattled off a few images.  A few of the results are shown below, and I am pleased that I decided to pay it a visit.  Hopefully the four Bluethroat images below, show why.