Saturday, May 03, 2008

Smooth Operator

2 comments:

The Drunkbirder said...

Hi Mike, nice shot. How did you take it? was it set up in a tank or in a pond? Did you use any filters such as a polarising filter?

Mike Weedon said...

John,
The pic was taken in our garden pond. I shot it with a Canon 30D with a 300f4 + 1.4 converter. I don't have any filters, but they would surely be a good idea, as photographing the newts underwater was very tricky. The blurry dots all over the pic are daphnia which are keepign the pond lovely and clear at present despite the occasional visits from Mallards.
It was the first time we have seen male Smooth Newts in the pond, and I watched up to five males chasing and flirting with one female - nibbling at the genital opening and all sorts of shenanigans.

Mike