How can I use the Bag Hide?

The Bag hide arrived by mail on Tuesday. I tested it at home and felt that it might have been a good buy but I needed to test it.

The summer so far has been really lousy with mostly low temperature and rain but yesterday evening the sun was out so I decided to head out to the fields along Säveån to test the Bag hide at the Reed Bunting site that I have visited before.

I had visited mother before so I got there just before 19:00. I could see some heavy clouds in the distance but they were inland so I still had hopes of some decent light. The mission was to test the Bag hide so I walked to the site without stopping to many times. During the walk I could see that the last weeks had made everything much denser and that meant I probably would have trouble finding anything living to take photos of.

The Reed bunting site was none productive and I could see Warblers flying over the fields and at some places I could hear Reed Warblers. Up in the sky there were Gulls but I felt this wasn´t what I had expected. I walked back a couple of hundred yards and turned back out into the fields where I had seen some Warblers before. The light was still ok so I stopped and took some pictures of grass and two plants that were in bloom because I couldn´t come home without any pictures on the memory card.

Just when I thought about giving up a Reed Bunting appeared just in front of me. It sat beautiful just a couple of meters from me and it stayed even when I moved slightly. It seems to be a more relaxed bird among humans than many others.

The background in this photo isn´t the best but it is still a nice art portrait of a Reed Bunting.

It flew off into among the taller grass/reed. I didn´t want to give up now even if I had some good shots of the bird so I played a Reed Bunting call from the internet and that was the trick. The bird came back to investigate the sound. It didn´t come as closely as before and it was more attentive now that it was searching for a “foe.”

This made me try the Bag hide for the first time. Unfortunately it didn´t bring me any good photos but that was probably more the fact that I would have needed someone else to play the Reed Bunting call because the bird didn´t approach the exact location of the sound it just flew around it.

Instead I packed the Bag hide and started the walk back to the car but I stopped when I heard a call that I didn´t recognize. It was a strange one and soon I saw the bird. It was an adult that seemed to call on the young one to follow. I took out the camera from the backpack and started to take some photos.

This photo I like even if I had trouble with the light because of the clouds that had gathered. I would have liked to use a higher shutter speed 1/1000s or maybe even 1/1600s but I had to use 1/500s or 1/800s like in this photo. It makes for a softer picture but still it’s a nice one with the adult balancing on the twig with just one leg.

At home I looked at the photos and ID the bird to a Whinchat. I haven´t seen any reports of this bird in the area before but I understand that it is suitable habitat for them.

The evening started slowly but still I came home with some decent photos.

Photo Gallery: How can I use the Bag Hide?