With the weather being so fantastic this weekend and the skies being clear and bright I decided to have a quick visit to RSPB Marshside to see if I could get a shot of the Pink footed geese as they came in to roost. As I pulled into the car park, a drive of a whole 15 minutes, the Sun vanished behind the cloud leaving me and a few other photographers that had the same idea in the dark, literally. [... read rest of post]
Late last week I received a copy of “Bye Bye Blackbird – Worlds Past and Worlds Away” by Eileen Berry, a book containing poetry from her memories or Marshide, Southport through to Northern Sudan. Eileen’s editor, Susan, asked if she could use one of my photographs for the cover a few months ago and until I received an email asking for my address I’d completely forgotten about it. My first ever published photo – brilliant! Susan found the photo from a post [... read rest of post]
A few more photographs from our recent visit to Anglesey which include our first visit to Abermenai Point The protected dune plant, Sea holly (Eryngium maritimum) is native to most European coastlines and resembles a metallic blue flowering thistle growing to a height 60 cm. In Elizabethan times in England, these plants were believed to be a strong aphrodisiac and in 2002 Sea holly was nominated the 2002 County flower for the city of Liverpool.
We might not have done very well in the sea fishing stakes during our summer visit to Anglesey but we managed to get out and about a few times so here are a few of the better photographs I took while we were there. All of the photographs in this post are taken using the Canon EOS 450D with most of them using the standard ‘cheap’ 18-55mm lens. To enhance the skies I used a hoya circular polariser which also cut [... read rest of post]
I’ve given up trying to get a photo of this chrysalis hatching. I’ve been getting to the car park early and visiting it and a few others like it, to see if I can catch a Comma butterfly emerging but I think this latest damp, cooler spell of weather has effectively stopped them hatching until the sun returns with a bit of warmth. Which is a damn shame as I’m going away for a couple of weeks and they’ll have [... read rest of post]
After spotting a Cinnabar Moth a couple of weeks ago I started looking for the tell tale signs of the yearly invasion and today I found the first signs of the annual ragwort decimation by these tiny Cinnabar Moth (Tyria jacobaeae) caterpillars. They were only about 1cm long but they were everywhere I looked, marching over their chosen battleground, leaving no Ragwort plant standing. Were they in Queens Park where I’d seen the adult and been looking all week? Were they hell… [... read rest of post]
Following on from my previous attempts at photographing beetles around Queens Park in Bolton I spotted some small dark metallic blue ones, very similar to the Green Dock Beetles I’d photographed a few weeks ago. I only had the ‘small’ camera, Canon Powershot A640, with me but as it turned out this was far more capable of close ups than my EOS 450D although the fact the beetles were hardly moving and I could get about 2cm away from them [... read rest of post]
If there’s one thing we know how to do well in this country it’s the nature documentary – hasn’t BBC Springwatch been great and we’re only into week one. Needless to say, with the beautiful weather we’ve been having and being a bit inspired by Springwatch I ventured out to Queens Park in Bolton during my lunch hour to see what mini beasts I could snap. There were tiny metallic green beetles on all the Dock along the edge of [... read rest of post]
I’ve not been sea fishing for a while, or any other type of fishing for that matter. Not for any specific reason just other stuff to do around the house and garden while the weather is good. But with the weather being so good this past weekend I couldn’t resist a walk along our local river, The River Douglas, to see what was going on. The river itself was quite quiet with the usual suspects bobbing along in the wakes [... read rest of post]
Anglesey is a fantastic place for any nature lover, in fact anyone who just likes being outside so while we weren’t fishing or just lazing about we did manage to go for the odd walk, more of a stroll really – didn’t want to tax ourselves after all… You can tell spring is finally here though as a lot of our avian friends that spend the winter months somewhere a bit warmer are finally arriving. Walking around the inland sea [... read rest of post]