Welney Winter Landscapes etc

Final images from Welney showing the frozen water and frosted vegetation, and some of the birds around the centre.

Birds at Rye Meads RSPB Reserve

Some images from a RPS Nature Group outing to Rye Meads on a very cold frosty day with very limited light.  As usual, the coots were bust squabbling while the Robins followed us around hoping for some disturbed insect life under our feet.

Feeding Strategies at Lackford Lakes

 Food is obviously at a premium over the winter months. Gadwalls appear to be a gentle non-aggressive duck but they spend their time with coots eating what they bring up from the bottom and occasionally steal food directly from the coots – a behaviour known as kleptoparasitism. At the feeding station, the robin attacked anything that came at all close to feeding area - the tits managed to get some seed by flitting in very fast while the larger sized blackbirds risked the aggression. The low light levels meant I was shooting between 2000 and 12800 ISO so not great quality.

Paxton Pits Birds

 While the numbers of birds and species on the water at Paxton Pits yesterday were impressive, the song birds were almost entirely absent during our Third Thursday public walk with the only sightings being a flock of blue tits and long-tailed tits and a friendly but not very healthy-looking robin. We watched several very confiding young Grey Herons, one with a damaged bill, around 30 Little Egrets, a Great White Egret, numerous Cormorants, Gadwall and Black-headed Gulls, Wigeon, Great Crested Grebe, Lapwing and Kingfisher. White balance control was made quite difficult by the very reflective green algae in the shallow water and the overcast conditions .

Spring Comes to Toft Wood

Yesterday for the first time I heard a Willow Warblers singing in Toft Wood and managed to photograph it in full song. The Woodland Trust has cut back quite a number of trees and bushes to widen the paths. On the walk round the fields back home, the view is now turning yellow with a lot of the oilseed rape in flower.

New Year Walk at Barton

We took a walk round the fields at Barton hoping to photograph a Hare or two. We briefly saw one retreating so here a miscellany from the morning. Several very smart -looking Reed Butings. There are a couple of very strange scarecrows - the one with dolls' heads is enough to scare anyone let alone a Crow.