nature walk

[stuck]

Not far from our village is a wildlife nature reserve where I took this photo of some Eurasian Wigeon in flight.

Ken

[HansV]

Wow!

[stuck]

We did quite well for nature. We were only out of the car for a few minutes when we saw a Barn Owl. It must have had a lean night to still be flying around at 11:00 am. Then there were the usual suspects of greylag geese, swans, mallard ducks, great crested grebes. Plus lapwings, deer, cormorants and curlew, thought the latter were much easier to hear than see. My son and my wife also caught a fleeting glimpse of an otter but I only saw the ripples in the water.

Ken

[HansV]

Sounds great!

The most exciting thing I saw today was two magpies ferociously attacking a squirrel that was trying to sneak up to their nest high up in a tree next to my apartment...

[John Gray]

Clearly the "bird hides" which was promised on their website didn't happen...!

[stuck]

Clearly the "bird hides" which was promised on their website didn't happen...!

Correct! We also saw two swallows and a house martin so it won't belong before 'our' house martins return to the nest they have in the eves above our bedroom window.

Ken

[BobH]

Great photograph, Ken.

You seem to improve with each offering. Capturing a flight like you did is difficult.

[stuck]

...Capturing a flight like you did is difficult.

Thanks but it wasn't that hard. I set the autofocus and shutter speed to something appropriate more or less as soon as I got out of the car and then I'd been watching the birds from a hide for a while so they were 'in frame'. Something then startled the birds so they all took off together.

Ken

[ChrisGreaves]

Not far from our village is ... where I took this photo of some Eurasian Wigeon in flight.

Glorious! I always love images of waterfowl taking off where there wingtips are about an inch above the water surface, something a human dursn't do when flying an aeroplane.
But then we seem to be pretty good at walking a mere[sic] inch or two away from a brick wall.

I have parked a copy of your image in my desktop wallpaper images folder for safekeeping.
Cheers, Chris
P.S. That River Derwent isn't the "Derwent " of the coloured crayon sets (paint sets?) that we were given every Christmas, is it?
I think that there is a Derwent area in the Lake District, beloved by my parents. C

[HansV]

See Derwent Pencil Museum. It's in Keswick, in the Lake District indeed. Keswick is roughly between Derwent Water and Bassenthwaite Lake (the latter is the only lake in the Lake District with "Lake" in the name...)

[ChrisGreaves]

See Derwent Pencil Museum. It's in Keswick, in the Lake District indeed. Keswick is roughly between Derwent Water and Bassenthwaite Lake (the latter is the only lake in the Lake District with "Lake" in the name...)

Ah! Thanks Hans. I was right, then, about the Lake District.
I stayed overnight in Shap, just north of Keswick , in 1998.
Cheers, Chris

[StuartR]

Fab picture Ken, sounds like a great outing too

[stuck]

...P.S. That River Derwent isn't the "Derwent " of the coloured crayon sets (paint sets?) that we were given every Christmas, is it?...

There are four River Derwents in the UK:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Derwent
This one is the one in Yorkshire.

Ken