Christmas Selection

This may very well be my last post of the year.So I thought I would show some of my favourite images from a busy year with the camera.They are all birds as they do seem to occupy most of my time but I have also enjoyed some memorable days photographing red deer,red squirrels and salmon so I may post  more later. Hope you enjoy this selection and thanks to you all for looking in and good health and happiness in 2014.

Happy Christmas

Just a short post this week to wish all my followers and fellow photographers a Very Happy Christmas.Christmas is rapidly approaching and I may not have enough time to get out and obtain more material for the blog.I have recently been searching for a barn owl to photograph but with to date no success.So I will have to make do with the one above which was photographed at the beginning of the year.

Come the New Year and hopefully some better weather normal service will be resumed.Thanks again to everyone for looking in and your kind comments,it makes it all worthwhile.Hope you all enjoy the festive season and we all look forward to next year and many encounters with our wonderful wildlife.

Pottering around Pilling

Yesterday on a sunny but cool day I went for a ride around some of my old haunts in the Pilling area.It was ideal in the car as I was able to cover a lot of territory and keep comfortable using the car as a mobile hide.I had hoped to catch up with some owls,barn,short eared or little but none were forthcoming and as yet I haven't found any photographable owls at previous haunts.It was still a pleasant day however and I managed some reasonable images of whooper swans and pinkfoots in the Eagland Hill area.Also what was very nice was seeing a large flock( approx 200+ ) of curlews feeding in roadside fields.I had earlier met up with Simon and we both enjoyed photographing the curlews from the comfort of the car.Perhaps the best birds of the day were the grey partridge in the vicinity of the feeding station at Bradshaw Lane.These could be introduced birds by the shooting fraternity but I like to think they could be native wild birds which have been present for many years in the Pilling area.Hope you enjoy my account and images from a pleasant day revisiting some of my old haunts.  

Big Tides ... Big Flocks

This week has seen some very high tides culminating in yesterday's storm surge which caused much damage and flooding around the coast.Lancashire did have coastal flooding and the Promenade at Blackpool  and other coastal routes were closed to traffic during the height of the storm.The North Wales Coast and down the East Coast of Yorkshire ,Lincolnshire and Norfolk took the brunt of the bad weather with much damage and flooding to properties.I stayed at home yesterday and today and worked on the images I had taken on Wednesday.
On Wednesday I visited the coast at Southport to watch and photograph the high tide wader roost.I think this is one of the most exciting spectacles to witness and photograph on the Lancashire coastline and I never cease to be amazed by the sheer numbers of birds present.I have tried to show above some of the birds present which consisted mostly of knot,bar tailed godwits,grey plover and oystercatcher. There would also have been dunlin and sanderling present in the huge numbers of birds at the roost.If you look carefully at a couple of the images above you will see a photographer, not me , who was under camouflage and was surrounded by many thousands of birds.He must have got some terrific images of the waders coming and going from the roost.I think I will have to try this approach on a subsequent visit. Thanks for looking in and hope you enjoy my efforts above to try and convey one of nature's finest spectacles.