Late Swallow Brood at Welney Wildfowl Trust Centre

While many Swallows are getting ready for their migration to Africa, this pair have a quite young brood in one of the hides. Not grat photos as very cark, but good to get the feeding action and the ejection of a faecal pellet. Very smart bee (ID to follow) and  a Hobby with a mouse(140mm lens!) - I thought it was a Kestrel.

Preseason Matches at CRUFC v Sheffield Tigers

Cambridge Rugby Union Football Club won both of the two warm-up matches on Saturday against Sheffield Tigers convincingly (59-0 and 38-5) playing in Red for one match and Black in the other. They certainly have some strong new players in their squad including Sam Yawayawa, a previous England U16 and a Scotland U20 international. Here a mixture of the two games with humour, tries and ball-passing action.

 

The Blue Bridge

Although we have passed under the footbridge over the A428 at Hardwick many times, we had never previously walked across it. Yesterday I set off over the bridge to walk the footpath and record the insect life but the path is absolutely bare with no flowers remaining so photographed the bridge and road instead!

Lackford Lakes Up Close

A small party of CCC Members scoured Lackford on Wednesday - some hunting the birds while others got their heads down in the foliage to see what stirred. For those at Ian's talk last night, these are processed with Capture One rather than Lightroom and certainly the software has done a good job on the Fuji Files. I exported these via Lightroom and forgot to reduce the Export xharpening so some look a bit over-sharpened!

Buzzards and Butterflies at Barton

The four resident Buzzards at Barton objected strongly to our presence by the pools on Monday and came to view us at close quarters a couple of times. The Beetle Bank, like the rest of the verges, has suffered from the dry spell but there are still enough Knapweeds and Thistles to support large numbers of Argus Brown, Common Blues and Green-Veined Whites.

Dragonflies at Burwash Pools Barton

I failed to get many species flying as I hoped - just some shots of an Emperor- but it was good to see many different species at the Dragonfly Pools. (Emerald coupled, Blue-tail and Common Blue Damselflies, Ruddy Darter, Brown Hawker, Four-spot chaser and female emperoro egg laying)

Wells-Next-The-Sea

 On the last morning of our short Norfolk break, we visited Wells and tried the last of the techniques on Jonathan's list - various camera movements and double exposures. The first is an in-camera double exposure, moving the camera during one of the exposures. The second image is a composite of an ICM and a static shot.

Other images of the beach to compare with previous visits. At low tide there is vastly more expanse of sands exposed and the isolated sand dunes are very small now compared with 2008 (https://pin-sharp.blogspot.com/2008/10/shifting-sands.html). The lagoon is now dry at low tide in contrast to 2009 (https://pin-sharp.blogspot.com/2009/09/september-summer-day-at-wells.html).