Mersea Mud, Oyster shells, More Mud and Amber and a tad of Digitalis

Went for trip to West Mersea with Ian and Amber, the dumb blonde.  We parked near the Strood and walked into West Mersea along the sea wall and on as far as the beach below the church before retracing our steps

Stick-in-the-mud...

A very posy black headed gull on the mud

Discarded Oyster shells - no this was not the detritus from my lunch!

A muddy meander near the boat houses

Amber discovering the glorious gloop which is Mersea

Guilty as charged, m'lud

Bath time...

A very fine foxglove

Goldfinches

As usual I risk my life by identifying birds!  This pair came to feed outside my open French window whilst I was having supper - I took shots between mouthfuls (mine!) They took it in turns to eat niger seeds from the bird feeder whilst the other either kept watch from a branch just above, or scavenged in the bed below.  I prefer the shots without the feeder in view, but what do you think?

I noticed  a green colour cast on the first shot and wonder whether this was because of the low sun lighting the bird through the leaves of the silver birch in which they were sitting.  I therefore rebalanced the colour using the white behind the  eye as the reference, But, experts, is it really white? Am I exchanging one cast for another? Comments please!

Little Downham Horse Trials

On Friday a group of us from Cambridge Camera Club went to the Horse Trials at Little Downham.  Though the weather forecast was dire, we managed to dodge the showers and had a good day with our cameras.  I took two cameras, my Nikon D4 with my trusty 70-200mm f2.8 which accounts for the first 12 of the images and my new Olympus OM-D E-M1 with a 75-300 mm lens which equates to a full frame 150-600 - I was keen to discover if I could use it at 300mm hand held.  I am happy with the results - I'd be interested to hear what my photophilic friends think!

Olympus pics start here - the first 3 are at between 250 and 300mm 

Preparing for an involuntary dismount - the only fall we saw all day - neither rider nor horse was hurt, though I think that the rider's dignity was bruised!  She had lost her stirrups at the previous fence (in the background) and had no time to regain them before take-off over the narrow boat (a fence used in the Olympics 3-Day Event in 2012)