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After a week of gloomy and very wet weather I jumped at the chance to take a short walk to Stoke Park this morning. It was lovely and sunny and so I took a 28mm lens to try and take some landscape photos.

However, on arrival at Duchess Pond I saw a sparrowhawk fly in and land in the pond quite close by.  In a panic I quickly swapped my lens for a much longer one. At first I failed to change the settings from those for landscapes and failed to get any decent shots as the sparrowhawk flew off when disturbed by crows. Luckily it came back for a further bath by which time I had sorted out my settings and got some very pleasing results.

I had a quick walk around the lake and took some photos of a cormorant and coots, moorhens and mallards in the beautiful sunshine. But by then I just wanted to get home to edit my sparrowhawk photos. Wonderful.