Iceland Trip - Long-tailed Duck

A species I was looking forward to photographing in Iceland was the Long-tailed Duck. I have photographed quite a few of them in the UK, but never in their breeding plumage. The males look very smart with their white heads and varying colours of brown, and of course their smart tails.

More images on my website - Steven Round Bird Photography

Iceland Trip - Common Snipe

At the end of May I spent 10 days in Iceland with my friend Richard Steel, photographing birds.  It had been the coldest spring for many years there, up until a week before we went there was still lots of snow around. It was a little warmer while we were there, on average, around 4.5 degrees, but with a constant strong wind (usually northerly) it did feel cold. Richard will be doing blog posts on the daily experiences, whereas I will be be posting here by species, as I add them to my website.  This may take a few months as I came back with 6000 images, this is a lot for me as I am very selective when taking shots.
The first species is the Common Snipe.  Almost everywhere we went their calls and sound of their display flight could be heard, they were possibly the most common bird of the trip.  We even had to avoid running over them on the roads.  They pose singing from posts, giving great photo opportunities. Here's a selection of them. 

Whinchat

Back in April I had the pleasure of spending an hour or so photographing a male Whinchat. A moorland breeding species that is not usually an easy bird to photograph. Like the Willow Warblers in my previous post, this was another good result for this years spring photography. A few here of the 25 added to my main web site.

Willow Warblers

Earlier this year I realised that I didn't have many Willow Warbler images. This would be a target species for the spring. Things don't always go to plan but in April I had a few good sessions with them and now have an additional 25 images on my web site. Here are a few of them.