On Saturday I went to Bracken Hall Countryside Centre to look at the photos and postcards of Shipley Glen that were being shown by Mike and Tish Lawson. I also had my camera with me so after looking at the photos I went down into Shipley Glen.
The header image is a slightly wider shot of the Honey Bees. This one was taken on the Saturday.
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Bee Hive
On the Saturday it was very quiet in terms of nature but I did spot a tree with several holes that had probably been created by Great Spotted Woodpeckers. And one of the holes looked rather busy. Bees were going in and out. I took a few photos but the light was not good. The hive looked busy so I thought another visit might be worth it.
On Sunday, instead of joining the Airedale and Bradford RSPB local group at the Prince of Wales Park in Bingley, as intended, I decided to have another look at the bee hive.
This time I took my tripod with gimbal head and set it up as high as I could while still being able to use it. The hole was a good 4 metres high in the tree. With the tripod I was able to spend time on focussing. It also meant I could expose more for inside the hive, which is why the tree looks so light.
With my interest last year with fungi I had a UV torch in my camera bag, it can be used to see what fungi fluoresce under UV light and so help with ID, or so I am told. I did try it on Sulphur Tuft fungi last year and they do fluoresce. 🙂 The torch also acts as an ordinary torch so I used that to shine some light in the hive and on the last photo you can see a bit more into the interior. They are certainly piled in there.
Others
On Saturday I had a look at Crag Hebble Dam but no Kingfisher or Little Egrets. Because of the light I did spend some time looking in the water for fish. I had often wondered how birds see fish in the water and the unruffled water and light let me see clearly into it. I spotted a few tiny fish, thin ones about 2 or 3 cms long, but then spotted one about 7 or 8 cms long, worthwhile for a Kingfisher to catch it. But that was the only one I spotted of that size. Perhaps that is why I haven’t seen Kingfisher there recently, no fish, no Kingfisher.
On Sunday I kept hearing a Green Woodpecker. There may have been a few because at one time I heard one towards the Saltaire side of the glen and then towards the Glovershaw end of the glen. I spent some time looking and listening for one but didn’t see one, or so I thought.
At one time I spotted what looked like a Treecreeper, it came down from one tree to another and moved across, mouse like. A couple of other small birds flitted about, probably Blue Tits. Anyway, I pointed my camera in the general direction, it didn’t have anything to focus on but I still pressed the shutter when I saw movement. When looking at the photo at home there was nothing where I thought I had seen movement, but partly hidden by a branch was a Green Woodpecker. So I was not wrong in thinking that Green Woodpeckers were around. My previous photo of a Green Woodpecker was taken 13 years ago, in 2013. I need to do better.
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The images are published under the Creative Commons, BY-NC-SA license. Feel free to share them, edit them, but please keep my name in the credits. And if I have got the ID of anything wrong please let me know, I don’t consider myself an expert but I have write something. It is often a best guess and it would take up too much room to say It could be this, or it could be… or perhaps.
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