High Moorland

Before I get back to finish off the Seahouses trip, I had an email from a friend of mine Remi who lives in France saying he was coming over on holiday and could we meet up once again.
Cutting a long story short he wanted to photograph Red Grouse, so after sending him the info everything was in place and a day,time and meeting place was arranged.

The fateful day was last Wednesday when nearly all the country was hit with rain and we were not to be left out!! I picked up my good friend and off we went thinking was this going to be worth the trip, but in the end despite the rain, fog and more rain the day was a great success.

We met up with Remi and his lovely wife Maria and after a few warming coffee's we set off up onto the moors, just hoping the mist would clear!

Female Red Grouse taken in the gloom

 Male Red Grose looking even Gloomier!

We did get a few breaks in the weather

As we did a drive through when the mist rolled in we did not expect to see this!

Lapwing foraging for food in the sodden grass

And again but this time with driving rain!

One of the best birds of the high moorland has to be the Golden Plover

And when this bird calls out it is one you do not forget

Seahouses II

As we scanned the coastline for subjects to photograph we noticed that the House Martins and Swallows where collecting mud and some kind of seaweed, obviously birds were in different stages of nest building.

With a little research back home the material being collected was a green algae UROSPORA commonly called green hair/green barrels, it is found mostly on the rocks and it looks like they are growing green hair, to me it looked like grass, anyway!

First the House Martins that were mainly collecting the algae.

Not all followed suit, these two where still wanting the mud.

Now for the Swallows, these were taken on the second day when the sun was not as bright!

And just to finish off the House Sparrows just had to join in

Seahouses

Just spent a couple of days in Seahouses, great company great accommodation and great weather, well first day was sunny and hot second day was cloudy with bright intervals, which threw at us different challenges with the subjects we were photographing.

There is more to Seahouses than the Farne isles and we had decided that the trip out to the islands was not to be, several reasons really, firstly we had both done it many times before secondly both of us thought it was getting to commercialised! And after being told that last year they broke the record for the number of visitors that visited the islands (over 500,000)! what does come first the wildlife or the money!!

Rant over, so what did we do; well we spent the time on the coastline photographing a number of subjects of which I will be showing over the next few days; these include House Martin, Swallow, Ringed Plover, Dunlin, Kittiwake and of course the Eider

Eider is very easy just go to the small beach at the side of the harbour and the birds will come to you especially if you have some bread.

A little more of a challenge was to photograph the birds further out to sea but due to the weather conditions and the picture I was hoping to get the sea was mainly calm and there was very little swell!

On the odd occasion the swell did catch me out!!

More to come from Seahouses with the other species that we managed to get

Slow Worm revisited

I would not normally start off by showing a picture of a lump of Limestone, but after going back to my friends garden to look for Slow Worms and not having much luck this one piece of rock gave up it's little secret! On the underside of the rock was a small natural hole actually in the Limestone and yes your right; inside was a female Slow Worm, my friend had never seen one in there before and was as amazed as I was just how it had got in.

This last picture was in-fact one of the first that I took, as we put the rock back the Slow Worm was as in the top pictures curled up inside. So if you do go to look for Slow worms make sure you check everywhere 

Slow Worm

It has been a long time coming but when I received a text accompanied with a photograph of Slow Worms mating I just had to visit this friends garden.

It has been one of those things that I keep meaning to do and so here I was stood in this wonderful garden managed for one thing; the local wildlife and especially Slow Worms.

The very nice couple who manage their garden had made several 'worm hotels' and this is were we saw 5 individuals and 1 youngster, I was told that the numbers can be higher and can be found almost anywhere in the garden.

This picture however was taken on their front doorstep feet away from a busy main road!!

There will be more to come I just have to go back and make sure I don't mess up with the camera again!!!!! 

Common Lizards III

I have two main areas for photographing Lizards which consists mainly of stone walls and may only be 200 meters in length in total. On this occasion I tried a new area for me to see if (a) there was a population and (b) if there were any striking individuals i.e. other than brown individuals!

It was not long before I found this cracking individual

And another one!

It was not long before I found others away from the walls. This one a juvenile was very skittish

I was photographing this male when I noticed through the camera he was looking upwards, after taking this picture I glanced up to see a Common Buzzard had just flown right overhead.