DIARY                             

30/3/08  Still confined to barracks due to family caring commitments, we concentrated on one of our favourite garden visitors - the nuthatch. A welcome bonus also arrived in the form of a goldcrest.

17/3/08  It's only when you spend all day watching the garden birds that you realise how feisty they are. They have so much to contend with - lawnmowers, cars starting up, doors banging, phones ringing, bonfires, sirens, flute practice, shrieks of children as they play, footballs and tennis balls - not to mention actual predators. Our redpolls and other garden birds are still around, despite visits today from a sparrowhawk and a neighbour's cat.

16/3/08  Our first trip of the year into Derbyshire successfully located our 2 prime targets - dippers and water voles

14/3/08  Several redpolls have been visiting our bird feeders recently, so we put up a hide in our back garden and spent the day watching them eat us out of house & home

1/3/08 Tracy attended a very interesting and informative workshop today on digital audio visual presentations by Barry & Carol Beckham. Visit our "slide shows" page for the first automatic show we've produced.

2/2/08  Continuing nasty weather with a bit of snow, sleet but with the occasional spell of sunshine - a real mixed bag. We spent the afternoon waiting for the short-eared owls, but only one decided to brave the weather. However, someone (presumably one of the many other photographers) had put a couple of sticks into the grass. We spent most of the afternoon fantasising about how good an owl would look perched on the new addition to the landscape. We were flabbergasted when the only owl to be flying that afternoon actually did decide to use the perch and surveyed its domain for a while from the new vantage points.

30/1/08  Recently we haven't had much opportunity to re-visit the short-eared owls we first photographed last spring, as owls don't tend to hunt much in strong winds or rain. However, one brief sunny afternoon in the midst of bad weather was all the incentive needed to head off to spend time watching the antics of at least 4 short-eared owls. They're great fun to watch as they quarter the fields but unfortunately they don't fly for long - once they catch a vole they tend to stay hidden in the long grass whilst eating it. It can be anything from about 15 minutes to 2 hours before they're ready to fly again. As ever, patience is a virtue and during the wait, a meadow pipit briefly popped up onto a nearby bush.

December 2007

Lying down on a beach in North Wales in December is probably more likely to produce frostbite than a suntan, but we braved the elements this month to spend time watching the antics of waders

knot	oystercatcher

redshank

redshank

turnstone

 

November 2007

When the weather turned colder, we headed to a local bird feeding station

male bullfinch

magpie

reed bunting

female bullfinch

male bullfinch

 

October 2007

You can't see too many red kites, so we paid a return visit to gigrin (www.gigrin.co.uk)

Not too far from home we also found some cheeky little red squirrels

 

September 2007

Another trip to our favourite red-kite hot spot to try out the excellent new photographic hides (www.gigrin.co.uk) and an evening at a Welsh badger set.

Also an expedition to Scotland to visit Bass Rock (more gannet photos in our Bass Rock gallery). 

 

August 2007

A trip to whixall moss nature reserve was swiftly followed by a trip to the local chemist for some calamine lotion to calm the mosquito bites.

However, the pain was tempered by images of numerous butterflies, dragonflies and day-flying moths.

Holly blue butterfly

Drinker moth

Peacock butterfly

Black darter

Brimstone butterfly

     

July 2007

A trip to the Lake District gave the reward of a lifer butterfly - the high brown fritillary. Also, we are getting a nightly visitor to our caravan - a wood mouse.

 

June 2007

Water appears to be the theme for the weather and our photography this month - we followed a family of little grebes for several weeks and had a few close encounters with water voles along the way

     

May 2007

We have made several trips into Derbyshire over the past few weeks, following the fortunes of a family of dippers

Courtship		Calm is restored after all the chicks have safely fledged
The female begs for food	The male dutifully obliges
Both parents are	run ragged by the young chicks never ending demands	for food

 

April 2007

HEALTH WARNING : If you don't like snakes, don't look at this month's diary pictures !

We travelled down to Sussex to spend a day with wildlife photographer George McCarthy looking for adders (www.georgemccarthy.com)

- plenty were found around the lovely heathlands including golden brown females and striking black & white males