As the weather has been so great recently I went for a long walk along our local river, the Douglas to practice my photography skills and to see if i could manage to get a half decent image of birds in flight with my current equipment. With the dry weather and the sun the banks of the River Douglas had dried considerably leaving shallow pools for wading birds to sift through for food, the usual suspects were in abundance; Oyster [... read rest of post]
As we went up to my parents for lunch, a very pleasant yearly gathering of the ‘clan’ myself, Dad and my younger brother took Megan (Mum and Dad’s black Labrador) on a quick walk round the country lanes to tire her out before we sat down for lunch. As usual I took my camera but I utterly failed at the ‘wildlife cameraman’ bit, it wasn’t my fault… even Megan was stunned. As we rounded a bend in the lane running [... read rest of post]
On Thursday I was doing my usual lunchtime walk round Queens Park, Bolton when I came across this, a strange, but probably easier, way to catch the fish i thought… What is actually happening is that the park has been granted some money from the lottery fund and part of the re-development is tidying up the ponds (inside and on the banks) and making them more accessible for everyone, anglers included. So first they have to move the fish out [... read rest of post]
After some fairly dismal weather these past couple of months I finally managed to get out for a walk along our local river, the Douglas, and as I’m a bit (understatement of the century) rusty I took out my camera just to check it (and me) is working as it should. There wasn’t really much to see exfcept a lot of ducks including some Widgeon (which make the amazing whistling noise), Teal, Shelducks and the usual suspects of Mallard and [... read rest of post]
Just a quick post to say I’m still here but with the weather being so terrible during the weekends we’ve not had chance to go fishing or had the inclination to go walking. I managed to get out at lunchtime for a quick walk through Queens Park, in Bolton, only to find that most of the footpaths near the River Croal are closed as they’re repairing the bridge, and they will be till at least April… oh well, at least [... read rest of post]
The weather here in Lancashire has been a little unpredictable to say the least over this past week. We’ve had torrential rain, blazing sun, light breezes and almost gale force winds so it’s been one of those weeks where getting out to enjoy the abundance of wildlife the area has to offer has been a bit touch and go. Most of the migrants such as Swallows are starting to head south but still the insect life continues to flourish. One [... read rest of post]
And then it was time to come home. After packing the car and leaving Ty Cristion behind until late our next visit late September we spent a few hours at Penmon where we had our lunch and our fairwell slice of cake from the café, The Pilothouse. This was one of the best holidays I think we’ve been on, not due to any spectacular sea fishing achievements, but because we got to do all the things we say we’re going [... read rest of post]
As the wind continued to be a bit blustery we decided to go and visit South Stack lighthouse with the cameras and spotting scope to see what bird life we could find. This time we climbed down the cliff path (all 400 steps of it) and went across to the lighthouse where the Lesser Black Backed Gulls still had chicks. The views back towards the cliffs of the sea birds coming and going were astonishing and we saw all sorts [... read rest of post]
As the wind continued to be a little severe we sacked sea fishing off for and went for a walk along the cliffs between Cemlyn Bay and Carmel Head. The scenery was stunning, with great views of ‘The Skerries’ over the sea to the north west. There was an amazing variety of wildlife on show not least being a huge number of Green Veined White butterflies, feeding on the cliffs out of the wind. At least I think that’s what [... read rest of post]
Again the wind played havoc with our sea fishing plans and to make matters worse it was one of the few days of ‘proper’ rain we had during our stay on Anglesey so we went for a drive around the eastern side of the island, mainly the Llanddona / Red Wharf Bay area to see what we could see. After a while we moved ‘up’ the coast a bit to the section of the bay nearest to Pentraeth where I [... read rest of post]