I'm a keen amateur naturalist and photographer living in Somerset, England, UK. I've started this blog to showcase the photos taken near where I live and also from when I travel.
I've been running a Picasa gallery for several years and you can see some 2500 photos by clicking on the Picasa Web Albums page.
This confiding and well-watched bird has been feeding in the flooded meadows on the banks of Blagdon Lake for several days. Number 303 on my British list and my first (British) tick this year - having (almost) foresworn twitching since getting to 300 late last year.
The Nightingale is a particularly difficult bird to photograph. The males frequently sing only from deep within dense cover. However, this one seems to like to sing a bit more in the open and I got a series of shots while it was in full song. Not terribly close but it shows the bird well in its habitat.
We returned to Portland early this morning and while there weren't the huge numbers of fall migrants that were present yesterday, we were rewarded with male and female Ring Ouzels. Too far away for photos.
To Portland first thing. The Bill was alive with wheatears but there were few land migrants, probably due to the fine weather. The wheatears were rather flighty and unapproachable but I managed to bag this female.
I went early to Greylake this morning in the hope, yet again, of seeing and photographing the resident stoats. To no avail, as usual. The duck numbers have fallen considerably while breeding residents seem to have got off to a good start. The summer migrants have yet to arrive but the reed buntings are very active.
There were a few little egrets present which are presumably considering nesting nearby.
A short trip to Combe St Nicholas to see this warbler which seems to be over-wintering at the local sewage works. There are a number of chiffchaffs and goldcrests all of whch are incessantly foraging in the shrubs surrounding the works. All very difficult to photograph. I managed a few shots as it was searching for insects in the hazels.
I caught up with the two drake ring-necked ducks that have been dotting around the Dorset/Somerset border during this winter. They were on one of the flooded gravel pits at South Chard. Getting some shots involved judicious trespass but it was worth it. The birds were quite shy but I managed this shot of the two of them with a drake tufted duck.
While the two species are superficially similar, the ring necked ducks are smaller, have differently-patterned bills, a peaked crown and a shorter tail. They are also smaller overall and have a grey flank (which blends into white anteriorally) and no tuft on the head.
