Wet Weekend

It’s a bit of a pain when during the week it is dark before i get home from work, and now its the weekend, it's pouring with rain. Pete and I still ventured out on Saturday morning and we decided to have a look on the Moors. There were three Herons in one of the larger fields, and the first big flock of Fieldfare i have seen for this winter. I have seen Fieldfare in the previous two weeks, but either solitary specimens of small groups. It's nice to see a decent, noisy flock of these colourful winter thrushes.

I did one evening last week, manage to get out for the last 35mins of light after work. Apart from a few Herons in the fields and a noticeable increase in Teal and Widgeon numbers, it was pretty quiet.

 The light faded too quickly and I slowly headed for home. I couldn’t resist a couple of moon shots through the scope with the phone on the way though.

 

 

So, Saturday was a wash out, but still had a laugh walking the Moors in the rain with Pete. Sunday was a beautiful morning. Jon and I visited Dosthill nature reserve. It was not fully light on our arrival and we attempted to phonescope a Buzzard on the wires. As the increasing light was in front of us, a sillouette was the best i could manage.

The Tame was running high and coloured after yesterdays deluge. We could see the North Pit from Dosthill bunds, and most of the islands were submerged. It looked like the entrance to the wetland area from the Middleton side was flooded in front of Fishers Mill bridge too. So access from the RSPB car park would have been difficult without wellies.

When the Sun did put in an appearance, it was a glorious morning, in fact it was hard to believe it is November. We messed about with the scopes and phones, just hand holding the phone to the scope eyepiece to see what results we could get at different distances. I like this Swan shot.

The promised RSPB bridge joining the two sides of the reserve has been a long time coming. The footings are now complete to accept the bridge, I hope 2015 will see the bridge in place. 

 I have been using some new photo editing software and a new blogging program for the first time to write this entry. It has taken a while to get my head around it all. Hope it looks ok when i press the “publish” button?  Here goes!