An early start
On one of those rare occasions when my day off coincided with Sheryl’s day off, we decided to go with Glenn to visit the grey seal colony at Donna Nook in Lincolnshire. Not being sure of how busy it would be, there, we decided the best plan would be to get there pretty early. From Leeds, via York, it’s about three hours travel so we elected to depart from home at 5am, to get to York for 6am, then to Donna Nook for around 8am.
We stopped along the way at a petrol station with a Spar attached. It also had a Greggs and a Subway, so it was a perfect stop off to get breakfast and grab a toilet break. Ultimately, we arrived at the seal colony just a little before 9am.
Despite being four hours into our day, the sun had barely risen when we arrived and my first photos were pretty dark – although a legacy setting meant my first photos were even darker than they should have been, with my exposure compensation set two stops below! I quickly resolved that issue before I took any keepers!
It was chilly but with almost no wind, so we were not desperately cold, despite it being just 6 degrees Celsius. I think we were there twice as long as we’d anticipated, and I managed to shoot over 600 images in that time. It was one of those rare occasions when I switched out the D5300 in favour of the D800, coupled with the Sigma 150-600mm.
I knew that the subjects would not be too far away and that a 600mm upper limit would be perfectly adequate with respect to reach. I was able to take advantage of the full frame’s shallower depth of field and correspondingly increased background separation, as well as benefiting from the D800’s more capable focusing system. As much as I love my D5300 for its 24mp of 900mm equivalence, it’s really only the better option if I need 900mm of reach and some cropping capability. I do still love the images out of the D800.
The area known as Donna Nook is actually a Ministry Of Defence training site and, while there, we were treated to a few fly-bys of F15E Strike Eagle fighter jets.
One of the Wildlife Trust wardens with whom I was chatting told me that these jets had been there the week before. Interestingly, Glenn and I had been at Spurn Point the week previous, and had heard the jets flying over Donna Nook from there! This time we were able to see them, and I got a couple of distant photographs of them.
Apart from an influx of children on a school trip, there weren’t too many other patrons at the colony while we were there, and our views were entirely unimpeded. We spent almost exactly two hours at the colony before setting off home, very satisfied with our morning outing but, I think, all of us ready for a nap!
Gallery: Donna Nook Grey Seal Colony
