This day is a Sunday when I would either be going up onto Baildon Moor or down to the river with my long lens, looking for wildlife. Fortunatley Baildon Moor is also a golf course so it seemed reasonable to try and combine the two – Day 15 Sport (read my first posting about the challenge here – marfell.me.uk/wordpress/?p=266) for the challenge and a bit of wildlife photography.
On Saturday I felt I missed an opportunity by not going out until after my coffee (the light seemed good early on, but I was lazy) so today I headed out at a reasonable time (for a Sunday anyway) and I had not been outside long when I thought the long distance visibility was excellent. Hills were getting in the way a bit but everything looked sparkling so it seemed like a good idea to head off to Riva Reservoir again to try and improve on my photo of the 3 masts.
However it is still not as good as my first attempt. Do we have clear days any more?
The task for the day was to get some sport in the camera mixed with a bit of wildlife. The sport shot I went for, and submitted to #bradfordphotoaday was this one. This was taken with my long lens which is why the golf ball is not a streak – it is coming towards me. The long lens also compresses the slope and makes it look as though they are at the top of a cliff.
But before I took this shot I had already seen some wildlife. There were quite a few Skylark around.
Most of the time they were happily sharing the place with golfers.
As you can see it was rather cold that morning – this golfer has a pale blue golfing glove on his left hand and a dark blue glove on his right hand. Skylark could be heard singing above my head and occasionally I managed to see them take to the air and start climbing until they were just a dot in the sky.
Lower down the golf course, closer to Sconce, I kept hearing Curlew but all I could see were golfers.
With all the people about it was quite surprising to see the Skylark scurrying about though when dods came bounding through the grass they soon scattered.
It was also great to see a female Kestrel quartering the slopes. At one point she dropped down out of sight presumably to try to catch something. It was several minutes before I saw the bird hovering again.
It is at about this time that I took the photo of the golfers that I submitted for the challenge. Soon after that I went down to the far side of the golf course and looked over the wall and saw wildlife tat was just a bit too big for the Kestrel.
On the dead bracken I came across this small Tortoise Shell butterfly.
And then a little further along near the wood I managed to catch sight of this Wren with a rather blue looking insect in its beak.
I then came across a feeding Reed Bunting that was doing some very unusual acrobatics.
And nearby my first sighting of a Willow Warbler
I then met up with some golfers near one of the tees and they insisted on posing for a photo. It was only later that I realised that they were the same group that I had photographed earlier on another tee.
Baildon Moor is also used by a lot of riders and one of my intentions had ben to try for a silhoet against the sky. The lighting was not very good for that and I did not see any horses on the tops of hills posing for me but this one is not too bad apart from the poorly positioned post.
Further down the moors towards Glovershaw, where the grass is longer, there were lots of Meadow Pipits.
During the day I also saw this Purple Fritillaria
Later on in the day (2:15pm) it was one of the guided walks around Denso Marston Nature Reserve where Steve was rather pleased with this Bee Fly
We also managed to see Roe Deer across the other side of the river. They seem to be surviving even though there are reports of people hunting them with dogs. A cross-bow bolt has also been found on the reserve!!
And then one of the last photos of the day on the reserve was this Wren with nesting material in its mouth.
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