Some images come about more by accident than design and this was one of those. I was watching roosting Marsh Harriers from a permanent hide and had the usual silhouette shots against the richly coloured sunset but wanted to try and capture this male against the reedbed. Putting the camera on AV with an ISO of 800 so late in the evening inevitably produced some very slow shutter speeds but as this male dropped into its roost the amount of blur still allowed the bird to be instantly identifiable and yet add that dimension of movement and sense of place and habitat. It is one of those images that appeal to some people and not others but it remains one of my favourite Marsh Harrier shots in spite of having several 1000 on the hard drives.

Canon 1D4 with a Canon 300 2.8 lens and 1.4x converter

1/15th second at f5.6 and an ISO of 800