Trip Report: Texel, April 2009

Last weekend I joined a group of photographers for a bird photography workshop on the Dutch island of Texel, hosted by Jeroen Stel. The trip was scheduled for three days, starting on the Friday morning, and we were blessed with good weather for the whole weekend. It was a good opportunity to do nothing but take photos for three days!

At this time of year there are plenty of birds to see on Texel, since a number of bird sorts congregate there to breed. So there was a lot of activity to see, albeit it often a little bit too far away to photograph easily. Although I took a pretty large arsenal of lenses along with me, I used the 600mm on the D3 most of the time, occasionally attaching the tc-14e teleconverter when I needed a little extra reach.

I have been to Texel a couple of times in the past, and have always ended up shooting at the Wagejot. I had hoped to find some alternative locations this trip, and although we shot in a lot of different places, it seems like Wagejot is still my prefered location; in fact all of the shots in this post, apart from the last one, were taken there.

Wagejot is a good location to find Avocet (kluut), Little Ringed Plover (kleine plevier), Curlew (wulp), Black and Bar Tailed Godwit (grutto/rose grutto) and Common Tern (visdiefje). We were most successful early in the morning as the light was appearing, as this is one of the most active periods of the day for the above birds.

Whilst shooting early in the morning the D3 again paid his way by delivering outstanding performance at high isos, necessary in order to maintain the high shutter speeds needed to freeze the bird activity.

You can view a selection of around 30 shots from this trip on my website by clicking here - it may take a couple of minutes for all images to load.....