Huntingdon Races on Easter monday

After a lovely sunny morning, the afternoon at Huntingdon Races was cloudy and very chilly but we managed to stay for most of the action. Mainly at 1600th with 100-400mm lens so f5.6 and iso800-1000 so quite a lot of noise from the 7D.

Pasque Flowers Out for Easter

 A perfect way to spend Easter Sunday lying on a hillside covered in Pasque flowers. A pretty good display though some have got a bit battered by recent winds. There are still plenty more to come into bloom but I don't think the display will be quite as good as 2013 when they were nearly a month later and there were estimated to be 10,000 flowers on the hill - see blog entry

Greenhouses at Audley End

The greenhouses at Audley End provided ample opportunities for photography on a drizzly afternoon yesterday. The vines are coming into leaf and guttating - producing small droplets which gave great reflections. All the various indoor fruit trees are in blossom and attracting bees through vents and lots of ants for pollination.

Photography Very Much Not Welcome at Audley End

Despite this statement on the web page for Audley End - English Heritage welcomes all photographers to our sites and we hope you will share your pictures with us on Flickr and Facebook - we arrived this afternoon to find that no photography is allowed in the main building except for the very non-photogenic Nursery. There is a small disclaimer at the end that some properties have certain restrictions but we felt that it would be a courtesy to have the photography ban at Audley End prominently displayed on their website page.

We did however spend an enjoyable time photographing the Stables gardens, greenhouses (more later) and cottages.

The horse is a retired racehorse, Jimmy, who lives at Audley End and enjoys taking part in reenactments.

Paxton Pits Update

At last a relatively calm day for a walk at Paxton Pits after all the recent high winds. The usual suspects turned up,Tufted ducks, Gadwall (the male with a damaged eye) Great Crested Grebes who insisted on doing their courtship as far away as possible and in a bush, Black-headed gulls and Cormorants as noisy as ever, lots of Chiffchaffs, first perching Kingfisher at Paxton and squabbling Coots. No Nightingales yet.

High Winds at Wimpole Hall NT Estate

The winds were scheduled to reach 50 mph yesterday - it was certainly very windy for a walk to the lake at Wimpole. I had a 10-stop ND filter with me so tried some moving cloudscapes (and moving treetops!). These are 30sec exposures holding the tripod down firmly on its spikes. The Folly is still being rebuilt - I suspect they will be letting it out for functions when complete but maybe not.