A Week In Bowland

I am finding it difficult recently to stay away from Bowland.It has I think become one of my favourite areas and this last week has once more seen me visiting this lovely part of Lancashire on a regular basis.The weather this week has been wonderful with warm days and plenty of sunshine and nature has responded with a show of green as woodland and fields took on those lovely spring colours.

I have been out early mornings and again in the evenings as these are the best times to catch up with the wildlife.One of the days was spent up in the Bowland fells with my friend and fellow photographer Paul Foster.Paul and I met up very early on what promised to be another warm and sunny day.We enjoyed looking for brown hares and Paul was able to add some nice images to his portfolio.As the day began to warm up we visited a location where we had previously seen adders.After much searching we eventually found one very lively individual. We followed it through the bracken and were able to get some reasonable images.Following this we spent the rest of the day walking up into the fells to look for some of the iconic birds of these wild fells.We managed to get within camera range of stonechats and whinchats which delighted us as they flitted about the heathery slopes. Another of Bowland's special birds is the ring ouzel.There were one or two about but it was not possibe to photograph these very shy summer visitors.Throughout the day a  distant cuckoo was heard but never seen.After our safari into the hills we returned to the cars well satisfied with a magnificent day out up in the Bowland fells.

It took me a day or so to recover from the safari into the hills and I returned to my more leisurely approach as I spent the evenings driving around the quiet lanes and backroads.Once again I had enjoyable sessions photographing curlews ,snipe,roe deer and of course brown hares. I have spent many hours this spring with these beautiful animals and have added more nice images to my portfolio.I have shown above a selection of images from the week with stonechat,whinchat ,wheatear and curlew. More brown hare images are shown as are a couple of landscape images from Longridge Fell. One of these a very early morning shot showing the mist below in the vale of Chipping and the other the sunset from the fell looking over Dilworth Reservoir .Hope you enjoy this week's selection and thanks for looking in.