Huwwphotography

 22nd  On my way back from university I stopped and got talking with a dogwalker who said they had seen what they thought were Smew (Mergellus albellus). I thought it was unlikely but still got super excited and decided to rush home and grab my camera just in case there were Smew. The rest of my journey home would take me along that stretch of the canal anyways. As I walked through the fields before the canal I noticed the Pair of Egyptian Geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca.) Once I reached the canal I immediately saw the "Smew", whilst they weren't smew it was still a very exciting species which rarely visits the Canal. It was a pair of Goosander (Mergus merganser), also called the Common Merganser in many countries. The females of Gossander do look very similiar to female Smew. After getting home and grabbing my camera I headed back to the Goosander, along the way I got a few out of focus shots of the Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis.) Photographing the Goosander was hard, they were ...

 14th Having moved back into uni accomodation in shropshire earlier that morning I decide to take the camera out for a spin. Newport and the surrounding area is signficantly different to that of my home in East Northamptonshire. The majority of the landscape being farm and estate land, with a few pockets of moorland and areas of underlying sandstone geology to the west and south. There is little amount of wooded area and the majority of wooded areas, except for chetwynd firs to the north, are plantations of varying age and sizes and tree type. Unlike the Nene Valley with it's varying wetland habitats Newport and the sorrounding area has a small canal, stream, some areas of riverside meadows and Aqaulate Mere, the largest natural lake in the Midlands. I decided to head to the canal to see if there was anything interesting. I have seen both little grebe's (Tachybaptus ruficollis), a Drake Goosander (Mergus merganser) and a pair of Kingfishers (Alcedo atthis.) Once I reached the s...

11th  I was in corby in the morning so me and my mum decided to head over to see the flock of 4 bohemian waxwings (Bombycilla garrulus) in corby later in the morning. We were unsure of the exact location but we did have a postcode. Whilst driving along the residential road where were we suspected them to be we were watching every rowan tree. Finally we noticed a few birders with binoculars and camres. We parked up near by and walked the short distance to the group of birders. The road looks over a former brown field site now planted to become the park of a new housing estate development. The waxwings' were hard to spot at first but after some of the help from the bird watchers I noticed them a short distance away sitting in a bare tree. Occassionaly 1 or 2 would fly down to feed on berries of Cotoneaster among other plants.  Bohemain Waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus). Corby, 11/01/24 Next we headed over to the north side of Rutland Water Resevere, which is around 30 minutes n...

 Janaury 4th  Me and my mum had originally planned to go bird watching on Tuesday the 2nd of January. However heavy rains predicted for the 2nd we decided to change the day to the 4th of Janaury. On Wednesday we were still unsure where we should go. We had originally considered going to see the flock of around 200 waxwing in the village of Hassop in the peak district. However it was a 2 hour 30 minute drive away and we were worried it would be very busy with other bird watchers. The other plans included visiting Eyebrook Reservoir north of Corby, as several smew had been seen there over the past few days, or RSPB Frampton marshes which is around an hour and 20 minutes away. However the flooding from Tuesday’s rainfall made us reconsider visiting a wetland site. Eventually we decided to visit Frampton marshes and if that was too flooded we decided we could visit Eyebrook on the way back as it's in the same direction. When we arrived at Frampton Marshes the staff at the visitor ...