All that glitters...

I don't remember asking the cat for a 7am alarm call, but clearly he thought I should be doing something more constructive than trying to catch up on some sleep.  Once the caffeine from the morning cup of tea had kicked in and I had woken up, I had the option of opening the mist net in the garden and try to catch some Goldfinch and Redpoll that were having their breakfast on the nyger feeder or go out and try to photograph something.  I decided to leave the birds to their breakfast and head out to try to find some Golden Pheasants, a species which is difficult enough to see let alone photograph but knowing the BTO Atlas 2007-11 are still on the look out for photographs of such species for the final book, I thought I'd try my luck at a site a few miles from the house.  Ten minutes later I arrived at the site and immediately realised I had left my bins in the office, not good when going birding, but as it turned out they weren't necessary as I had walked less than 20 yards from the car when I glanced to my right and there was a male Golden Pheasant in all its finery.  It saw me and wandered into a stand of Box so, finding a fallen tree to hide behind, I sat down and waited.  A few minutes later, a bit of movement and there he was, walking across the clearing in front of me, but the light was terrible, even on 1000ISO the best shutter speed I could manage was 1/50th of a second.  I chanced my arm and rattled a series of shots off as it walked across, scurrying a bit faster as it heard the shutter.  It disappeared into a smaller patch of Box near where I was sitting then emerged again allowing another back on but largely obscured, shot before flying across the path and out of view. The resulting photographs weren't as good as I would like, most shots got binned with movement blur but with the forecast of better light at the weekend I may be back...