Saturday 24 September 2011

Urban Graffiti I

On one of my routes to the River Crane, I pass close to a sunken walled area which features some of the best Urban Graffiti I have ever seen. In the absence of any new wildlife shots this weekend I thought I'd post up the first of a number of shots I took there this weekend. I've adjusted the shot for perspective and cropped the surroundings which makes it hard to get a feel of scale. The original mural was probably about thirteen feet wide.

Urban Grafitti


After taking these shots I spent a happy half hour chasing three juvenile kinfishers. Sadly they were just a little too skittish to get any decent photos - but it was lovely to see them.

Saturday 17 September 2011

Grey Heron (Fish Supper)

Yesterday I took a walk through Home Park, and Bushy Park. Lots of fallow deer were in evidence, as well as the usual crowd of water-fowl. On one of the less-well trodden paths in the Woodland Gardens I came across this grey heron, struggling to down a rather sizable fish supper. I was impressed. It kept it up for a long time, finally managing to swallow the fish whole. I wonder if heron's suffer from indigestion?

Grey Heron

Monday 12 September 2011

Habour Porpoise

A wet, windy, wild week in Pembrokeshire this year. Not a lot of great photo opportunities although I did see a lot of wildlife. Had a rather sad encounter with a deceased harbour porpoise on the beach at Abercastle, possibly after having run into trouble in the recent stormy weather. Sad to see such a lovely creature under such circumstances - but I couldn't help but marvel at the beauty of it's teeth!

Harbour Porpoise

Friday 2 September 2011

Migrant Hawker Dragonfly

Is it really six weeks since my last post? A combination of a few weekends with no spare time for photography and a couple of very good walks which yielded no photographs!

Today, however, I broke the dry spell. A fantastic, sunny exploration of Chobham Common in Surrey. It's a beautiful place. At first it seemed a bit quiet on the wildlife front. Eventually, however, I found an active selection of small birds. Stone-chats, various warblers, wood-peckers, coal tits and even a red kite.

Migrant Hawker Dragonfly

The highlight of the afternoon, however, was a happy half hour spent photographing dragonflies. I've always loved the coloration of the Migrant Hawker, but I've never seen one stay still long enough to get a photo. Today there were about three of them flying around one of the ponds, and pausing briefly to hover over the water. I wasn't 100% certain of the focus on the first few shots I got (the dragon-fly's body is longer than the depth of field of my 400mm lens at f/5.6) so I dropped the ISO and opened up to f/8 and was rewarded with this shot. Rather chuffed.

It looks much better if you click through to the larger image.