Over the last week I have taken my camera to Roberts Park, Milner Field, RSPB Fairburn Ings, RSPB St Aidans and Bracken Hall Green. The days were very grey, the cloud cover was being held in place by an anti-cyclone. This meant that it was a bit challenging in photography terms. Everything was a dull grey so getting some colour into things was tricky, and that’s always assuming that the images weren’t too blurry in the first place.
This one is a long post. The problem was that I went out with my camera before I had finished reviewing the photos from the previous outing.
As usual tap/click/touch an image, not its caption, to see it in its gallery.
Roberts Park
I had been planning on taking a trip to Roberts Park for a while. I wanted to know what the Bradford No. 1AA Private Fishing sign was looking like. On 4th Nov I went along and found out that there’s not much of it left now. In a few more years all that will be visible is a scar on the tree. For those that haven’t seen it before you can see and read more in this post – Private Fishing. The first photo I took of the sign was back in August 2002.
The Black Headed Gulls were swooping about up river near the cricket pich.
Milner Field
On Nov 7th I went along to Milner Field to do a bit of bird spotting. The header image is a photo taken during the walk – showing Autumn colours and a crunchy Beech leaf carpet. I didn’t see many birds at all until the end.
I did spend some time looking around for Fungi hoping to put to use what I had learnt on the Fungi Walk at Bracken Hall Green – only to realise that I didn’t know what I was looking at or what to make note of in order to help with ID. Putting them under the heading Fungus is the best I could do, but then that is the same for several categories of nature. I have to put some things under very broad headings – Tree, Beetle, Bee, Insect. I like to think I can do better with birds.
During the walk I took several landscape photos showing the gold, yellow and green of the Autumn.
On the way back to my car I still had a short lens on my camera for the landscapes, but as I walked past the gate at South Lodge on Higher Coach Road I spotted some movement in the field. I had disturbed something. I stepped back so that I was behind the wall but they were already walking away from me. I changed lenses as quickly as I could and spent a few minutes watching two Red Legged Partridge moving about in the grass feeding.
RSPB Fairburn Ings
The trip to RSPB Fairburn Ings on Nov 9th was with fellow members of the Wildlife Group of Bingley Camera Club which made it a fun outing. It was a very grey day though.
Apparently a Marsh Harrier flew over just a few minutes before I arrived.
Several times I would spot a bird on the water but by the time I had moved my camera round all I could see were ripples in the water where it had been.
RSPB St Aidans
Before heading home from Fairburn Ings I decided to have a look around part of St Aidans.
A Great Crested Grebe put on a bit of a show by lowering its head into the water and then bringing back out with its beak pointing to the sky. I couldn’t see another Grebe that might have been the target of this display.
St Aidans is big and I just kept walking, and the light kept fading. The Little Egret wasn’t easy to see against the sky. It was almost just a beak and a pair of legs against the grey sky. And I kept walking.
One thing that has surprised me is how big Great Black-backed Gulls are. Lapwings are a reasonable size but they are dwarfed by the gulls. A Cormorant, which is a big bird, looked only a little bigger than the GBBGs. And I kept walking.
By the time it was no longer possible to take photos because it was to all intents and purposes dark I was on the other side of the reserve from the car park. I still met a few people as I was walking back to the car. One person was using a pair of night binoculars looking for Foxes and Owls.
Bracken Hall Green
On Sunday Nov 10 I took three prints to Bracken Hall Countryside Centre for them to use. They were from the Fungi Walk of the previous weekend that I posted about – Kingfishers & Fungi in the first week of November 2024.
Walking on Bracken Hall Green spotted a few mushrooms and Lichen.
I have read reports of flocks of Redwing and Fieldfare visitors so I took my camera along Glen Road, looking over the wall into the fields of Mitton Springs. When I got to the end of the wall by the WWII cut outs I could see Thrush like birds in the tops of one of the trees. Going round the corner of the wall to get closer kept me reasonably well hidden from them. They were dark silhouettes, but tweaking the settings on my camera showed them to be Fieldfare.
While I was watching them a couple of small flocks of Thrush like birds flew around and off towards the trees of Shipley Glen. I went over that way and settled at the top of one of the paths out of Shipley Glen. My camera was pointing to a Rowan tree laden with berries. A few times Wood Pigeon and Redwing landed in the tree to feed on the berries. Several times walkers went past and I had a little chat with some of them. It was nice that those going towards the tree did so quietly and those coming the other way said they hoped they hadn’t disturbed things.
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