Welney Wildfowl Trust

The water levels on the Ouse Washes are too high for anywhere other than the main hide to be accessible. This added to the very poor light levels yesterday didn't give a lot of opportunity for photography but I did enjoy these starlings - obviously discussing the state of their world! Very few swans evident at Welney so I went for a drive around Pymore and discovered fields full of very muddy Whoopers!

(Some images are from my rather underpowered not-very-modern camera phone!!

 

Toft Wood Lichens

 There are some projects that I regret deciding to pursue and I think Lichen ID might be added to the list!! The differences between species or even genera in some cases is very small visually and so a complete classification of a localities lichens would have to involve a chemical testing! At the moment, I am resisting this and just doing tentative IDs having photographed them for their sheer beauty in colours and shapes!! These are from our 30-year old community wood in Toft. The first 3 images are from raw files sharpened and denoised with RawPrime3 and stacked in Zerene stacker while the others are jpegs from the Olympus camera's in-camera stacking. Again to shoot them all in raw, sharpen and denoise and then stack would be very time consuming. Lots of decisions!!

Snowdrops and Other Spring Flowers in Toft

These images were taken with a small Sony camera that was given to me as it wasn't working well. I gave it a good clean and then tested it at Toft churchyard which is turning white with snowdrops at the moment. Only saves in jpeg but will be a useful camera to carry with me as it has an impressive 20 times Zoom and can also do a reasonable macro shot.

Cambridge Botanic Gardens 2

 A few more images from our visit to the Gardens on Saturday including my first Bees of the year busy collecting from Winter Honeysuckle which is in full bloom. In the wooded areas some very impressive thorns and the plasmodium of a slime mould showing how wet it had been prior to our visit.

Cambridge Botanic Gardens 1

Botanic Gardens in Cambridge are at their best as regards spring flowers at the moment and looked extra good in the morning sunshine after overnight rain. I was using an old film camera 50 mm lens which gives very soft backgrounds for some of the shots and the modern 90mm macro for the rest.

Winter Walk at Wimpole Estate

Very enjoyable walk in the sunshine at Wimpole Estate yesterday morning wih my full-spectrum camera.