Tim writes: I took this photograph at Bretton Lakes in West Yorkshire in late January. It was a warm, muggy, winter’s day, but the previous few days had been really cold and the lakes had frozen over. But the warmer weather had melted much of the ice and a layer of melt water lay on the surface creating perfect mirrored reflections over the ice. I couldn’t believe my luck when this Coot padded over the reflective surface. This photograph shows the lobed toes of the Coot really well. This feature is shared by grebes and phalaropes. In fact, the word phalarope comes from the Greek for coot-footed (Phalaris=coot, pous=foot).
Taken with Nikon D500 Nikkor 300mm f4 with 1.4x converter (420mm) set at f5.6 1/1600 ISO 2200
Mark writes: the Countryside Alliance owes Tim Melling £500 – but he wishes this to be paid to Birders Against Wildlife Crime.
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Interestingly (or not) I’ve been approached to upload some images onto Wikicommons for use on Wikipedia and under open licence. This recent example of abuse by the Countryside Alliance is what stopped me, which does seems rather a shame? Rotten apples again spoiling it for others as I would not generally have an issue with my images used to further conservation/environmental campaigns but theft this brazen.
hopefully BAWC are £500 better off by now?