Beautiful Bowland

Recently I have made a few visits to Bowland to catch up with the wildlife.One of the visits was with good friend Paul Foster.We went on safari to one of the more remote areas of Bowland specifically to look for whinchats and stonechats.Paul had done a recce earlier and was confident we would be able to get some nice images of the moorland chats.It proved quite difficult especially as whinchats seemed to be very thin on the ground.We found half a dozen or so stonechats but they were always distant and I only managed a record shot of one in typical pose on the bracken.Later in the day we were lucky and found a nice whinchat posing within camera range and many images were taken of this bonny bird.As well as the birds we also saw a golden ringed dragonfly and a painted lady butterfly and Paul almost stepped on an adder. All in all an excellent day out in the wilds of Bowland.

Since that visit I have returned a few times to Bowland to photograph the magnificent scenery.Images of this lovely part of Lancashire are shown below.As well as the scenery I also managed to find another stonechat posing in the evening sunshine and got some nice close ups of the many meadow pipits that were busy feeding young in and amongst the bracken covered hillside.The highlight however of my visits was the sighting of a fabulous hobby.The hobby is a bird that is increasing its range northwards in response to a warming climate and is now established in a few areas of Lancashire.I was lucky to lock on to the hobby as it sped past in it's quest for prey on the open fellside and managed some reasonable record images of this rare encounter shown below.I will be keeping a check on this part of Bowland as I suspect the hobby is nesting in the area and I would love to have further encounters with this special little falcon. Thanks for looking in and I will be back soon with more from my wildlife encounters.