Infrared Images Thurne and Turf Fen

Today we had a very enjoyable landscape photography day led by Justin Minns, visiting Thurne Dyke drainage mill and the drainage mill at Turf Fen which can only be viewed from the opposite bank. The weather was very grey and quite rainy most of the time with just a few lighter areas appearing in the sky. Here some shots taken with my compact IR-converted camera  - jpegs taken direct from camera which I feel give a good feel for the day!

Wicken Fen (NT) in the Summer

An attempt to show the essence of  Wicken Fen on a sunny day. The stars are the White Water lillies at their best in all the Lodes. Large numbers of Willow Emerald Damselflies and Ruddy Darters as well as larger species such as Emperor and Brown Hawker - too fast to capture. Birdlife fairly limited and the heat produced too much haze for clear shots across the water. Common Blue and Argos Brown butterflies photographed

 

Welney Dawn to Dusk

I had planned to record the landscape during our full day at Welney on Saturday but never expected quite such a range of colours. It would have been completed by a great sunset but, by then, the cloud had rolled in and the last image of the swans flying in was in almost total darkness.

Swans Awake at Welney WWT

We were very fortunate to have a beautiful sunrise for our early visit to Welney Wildfowl Trust reserve at Welney. We arrived just as the sky was lightening with a beautiful pink glow. As the sun came up the colours changed from pink to orange to blue. It was wonderful to see and hear the Bewick Swans as these are so much shyer than the larger noisier Whooper Swans (the two in the foreground of the second image)

Blacktoft Sands Landscapes

A few images of the landscape etc of Blacktoft Sands which lies on the south bank of the River Ouse, where the waterway widens to become the Humber Estuary. Reedbed covers much of the site and this is England's largest intertidal reedbed. There are six shallow saline lagoons with hides, an area of grazing marsh and a small area of mudflat. Scrub between the hides attracts a great variety of warblers and a thriving colony of tree sparrows.