Aigronne Valley Wildlife pages

Showing posts with label Nickpix. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nickpix. Show all posts

Sunday, 4 August 2013

Moving pictures....

Regular readers will know that I occasionally use some of my brother's pictures....
but I felt I had to publish this...
now he's into moving pictures...
on the Breckland Express!!
even though it has nothing to do with Aigronne Valley Wildlife....
[although it is famous for the Stone Curlews on one of the Thetford Forest heaths.]

You can find the original on Nick's flickr pages...  the picture next left from this.

All in all a total of five of his pictures were used on this train.
Not bad, methinks... certainly one for the portfolio!!


There is more on the Brecks. including yet at least another of Nick's pix in the header [the one with the light streaming through the trees], here at The Brecks.
For lovers of natural history, I would happily recommend an exploration of this area...
apart from the Ice Age relict pingos on Thomson Common, there are sites where freeze/thaw action toward the end of the last Ice Age created geometric shapes...
mainly hexagons...
in the soil by separating the stones from the soil...
in these areas a different growth occurs on the two types of substrate...
and the resulting shapes can be seen from the air.
This leads to a more open habitat that favours plants that find competition difficult.

06/08/2013... Just discovered that there was only one other photographer involved...
Debbie Harris of 2up Photography...
she gives a fuller account of the launch on her website...
there's a nice shot of Nick in action fouteen pictures down...
he's developed quite a good "image stabilizer" [much like a darts player]...
I think he needs to come and do some raking of the grass here!!


To take a leaf [sic] from Susan of DotC:
Meadow update...
we lost about half of one of the original five "trognes" in the storm that followed one day after the last posting. I managed to cut a way through the rank vegetation, yesterday, with Betsy and found that it is still connected at the root end.

So, this winter, I will cut all the top growth off at an oblique angle and let it regrow as a supplier of small rods... and become a nesting place for the birds.

Almost all paths are re-cut...
and future work noted...
a lot of clearance this winter being one of the priorities...
it is getting really too dark and gloomy up the weir end!!

Butterflies abound.... huge quantities of Gatekeepers are around... also the biggest numbers of Marbled Whites and Clouded Yellows I've seen.... both in the teens [visible at any one time].
I've not yet managed to photograph the Clouded Yellows...
they only stop and pose when they know I haven't got a camera!!

The huge Sauterelles [Bush Crickets] have arrived in the potager area...
so watch out you Doryphores....
to the Sauterelle, orange means food...
not "yuck"  don't eat.
The Glow-worms are glowing...
saw three the other night...
two were using our white calcaire path as an "amplifier"

I'll post more on all this, but, with the harvest in full swing, watch out for the bigger raptors...
we've had Hen and Montague's Harriers around after hay has been cut....
but, as the rape in the field next door was being cut, a Black Kite was following the combine... swooping to catch rodents that had been pushed into open ground!
And, on the way to Loches, I caught the unmistakable profile of a Booted Eagle heading towards an area being worked!

No pictures of mine... don't want to detract from Nick's picture [as if mine could!!]

Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Waxwing lyrical

We haven't seen these here... yet! And probably won't... it would take a very hard winter!
A very, very hard winter...
Although they have been recorded as far south in France as Nice and Biarritz [1988/89]...
but my brother took these wonderful pictures at the w/e ...
he'd been following the waxwingsuk twitter feed...
now... that IS what twittering is for...
and I thought I'd share three of them with you.


Copyright - Nick Ford Photography




Copyright - Nick Ford Photography



Copyright - Nick Ford Photography


The last one is superb... Pauline and I have seen Waxwings in Leeds before... but never this clearly....
There are loads in the UK at the moment... the berries they normally eat grew very poorly this year and they've been driven across in their search for food.

The ones we saw in Leeds noisily stripped out about a dozen, heavily laden Rowan trees... and left!!
And it is unlikely that they'll still be where my bro' saw them either.


Post Note... Nick got the last picture picked up by the BBC today [on Saturday Jan 26... Big Garden Birdwatch.... LIVE TEXT 1352 : Winter visitor ] on their "things happening live" line... well done brother!!