Tuesday 25 February 2014

Frog spawn

Yesterday when I went out to feed the birds I was amazed to find some frog spawn in the reflection pool. The pool is only the size of a sheet of ply and 2 inches deep.
This morning we took an early morning hike up onto the Berwyns above our property. The idea was to try and find some grouse, although we drew a blank on them, what did surprise me was the amount of frog spawn in the puddles along the tracks up there. Some of the puddles were full to the brim of spawn while others still had frogs mating. We must have been near a 1000ft above sea level with small patches of snow still visible on the shaded slopes further up. As long as we do not get a drought this year the moors could be alive with froglets later this summer.







Sunday 23 February 2014

More wild goats of Snowdon

Just to round up last week's photography I thought I'd add a selection of the wild feral goats of Snowdonia photographs. Last Wednesday after photographing the Goosander we had a drive around the foothills near Llanberis and were fortunate enough to come across 3 herds, 2 of the herds were on the boulder strewn slopes but one had found plenty of food in a small woodland. The recent storms had brought down quite a few oaks and the goats were happily munching away on the young buds. These goats were a lot closer and I was able to get some nice portrait shots by leaning over the boundary wall.





















Thursday 20 February 2014

Goosander's again

Yesterday the weather forecast was for a nice day. As we had to be over in Snowdonia, change over day at the holiday cottage, I thought I'd re visit the Goosander's that live below Snowdon. We had some lovely light first thing, but has been the case all winter it wasn't long before the rain clouds rolled in.
While the light lasted it was lovely to watch them fishing, they must have been catching really small fry or water insects, whatever it was they were too small to see but they had certainly found a feast.
Below are a few shots taken yesterday. The male has a green head the female a rusty colour.
You can see the teeth in the bill to aid with gripping fish.


Peering into the water looking for fish


Female's tail just about to go under water.




Lovely early morning light, this is the male.

Saturday 8 February 2014

Goosander's

I'm gradually catching up with processing the images from last weekend. This blog is about the Goosanders we photographed on a lake in the heart of Snowdonia. Unfortunately the light wasn't that great but we managed some ok images. The lake in question is home to Goosander's during the winter months and due to the large population of ducks they have become rather fond of bread, their usual diet is fish. This makes the birds easy to attract, but trying to isolate them surrounded by hoards of ducks and seagull's can be tricky. Below are a few pictures from the morning, the females have the red heads while the males are dark green.










Tuesday 4 February 2014

Wild goats of Snowdonia

Sunday morning Ben Andrew and I headed into Snowdonia with two targets, the Goosander and the wild feral goat. This post will deal with the goat's.
The feral goats have roamed Snowdonia since Neolithic times, although it seems likely that during the ages at least some of them will have had their original blood lines watered down.
We found a couple of young kids quite near the road, this gave Ben the chance to get his first pictures. He did need some convincing though that he wasn't photographing somebodies pet's. After taking a few shot's of the youngsters we carried on to see if we could find any more, a group of four adults were half way up an extremely steep slope. The slope was too steep for us to climb with our camera gear so we took a few "environmental" shot's from the bottom.
Hope you like the pictures.





Monday 3 February 2014

Aberystwyth Starling murmuration

Having dealt with the first trip of the weekend, I'll now deal with the last. The Starling murmuration at Aberystwyth pier, this is the second winter that I have visited the pier and it never fails to impress. After spending the morning in Snowdonia, we travelled down to the seaside town in mid Wales in plenty of time for the flocks to arrive. Half of the promenade was shut, having been covered up by the sand from the beach, all along the sea front windows to B and B's where boarded up, having their windows smashed by the recent fierce storms. With the gale force winds and high tide the day before we did wonder if the starling's would arrive, we needn't have worried and was treated to a wonderful show. As the starling's finally came into roost I used the long lens and slow shutter speed to try and isolate individual birds and show movement during the hustle and bustle of them trying to find their perch.