Not only, but also

I also took these close shots in the woods today.

In order of appearance:

1. Beech bark (with great lichen)
2. Moss
3. Oak bark
4. More moss

Heavy weather

The weather's been like this today

at it's brightest! Most of the day it's been cold and grey with a biting wind and sleety showers making it difficult to raise much enthusiasm to get out. However, between chores I went for a walk round my local patch; Northcliffe Woods. Which looks like this:

and this:

Birds were keeping their heads down but I heard a Nuthatch calling and saw a Wren, Blackbirds and Song thrush. A large flock of Rooks, Crows and Gulls were prospecting the playing fields but I didn't hang round too long in the cold to check them out properly.

It all comes out in the Wash

Took a birding safari to the Ouse Washes RSPB and Welney Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust Reserves in Cambridgeshire yesterday (near enough a 4 hour drive). The Washes are summer grazing meadows which lie between two parallel drainage channels on the East Anglian Fens. In winter, these meadows are deliberately flooded in order to drain the low-lying surrounding farmland and in these conditions, attract huge numbers of wintering waders, ducks, geese and swans. Most notably perhaps are the Whooper and Bewick's swans which join our resident Mute swans. Whoopers and Bewick's breed in Iceland and on the Russian Tundra respectively and in that respect are truly "wild swans" and, for me, that makes them a bit special.

I took these shots of Coot and Shoveler while I was there. As it was a bit dark I over-exposed by a couple of stops and then had to reduce the brightness in Photoshop! The only other manipulation I've done is to sharpen them a little.

It was a windy, sleety day with the temperature just above freezing but it's amazing what turns up. I saw 50 species on my trip and I think that this must be the first time I've ever seen so many in one day since I started actively birding a few years ago. I like seeing all birds but my highlights were:

Tree sparrow (threatened, a red list species, but common here at the feeders), Goldfinch (very smart, colourful little birds), Gadwall (a really subtly beautiful duck), Teal, Pintail, Pochard and Wigeon (four, more colourful ducks which are a real change from the ubiquitous Mallard), Little grebe (a small bird not often easy to spot on acres of open water) Ruff (in winter plumage, quite a challenge to pick out among the Redshank), Snipe (again, subtly beatiful plumage, sometimes a real challenge to see as they're so well camouflaged, and the enormous bill just makes me smile!), Kestrel (it's always exciting to watch raptors doing their thing) and Kingfisher (so exoticly coloured and because, on this occasion, I was patient and my habitat assessment worked out just right!), Goosander and Great Crested grebe (both looking quite regal coming in to breeding plumage), Great Spotted and Green woodpeckers. And the swans.

Check them all out here

All things dark and beautiful

On the subject of things of beauty, at the weekend I went on a caving trip (Lancaster Hole to Wretched Rabbit) with friends from Bradford Pothole Club in the Ease Gill area on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Often caving trips are cold, wet affairs with much of the enjoyment being in difficulties overcome; the excitement generated by rushing water, big drops and tight squeezes. Something I'd recently lost a little enthusiasm for.

This trip was different. The cave was actually warm and dry with space to sit around, chat, crack jokes and enjoy the scenery. I've been into the Ease Gill system a handful of times before but had never seen the Minarets passage, shown above (image thanks to The Red Rose Cave and Pothole Club) until now.

And I suppose the opposite is true

If you go looking for ugliness, you'll probably find it.

It's great what you see when you look

In his book "How to be a Bad Birdwatcher" and column for the RSPB Birds magazine, Simon Barnes has a theme he returns to which is about how our lives become enriched when we decide to "actively notice" and look out for beautiful things. He's talking about birds in particular but I guess you could apply this reasoning to anything.

So, yesterday having arrived early for a meeting, I went for a 20 minute walk around Otley Chevin (a local area of woodland park) just to see what I could see and ....... a sparrowhawk!

I've certainly started seeing more of these since taking up birding more deliberately in the last few years and as one of the top avian predators of woodland and gardens they're really worth seeing. Sometimes it's just a streak in hot pursuit of an alarm-calling blackbird or some such, sometimes perched sentinel still, "casing the joint", preparing for a kill or, as yesterday, soaring above the tree-tops, lifting my soul.

First thoughts

I wonder what'll happen next.