DMNR + WFM. 30 Aug.

I thought the light on the Wild Flower Meadow looked quite good even though quite a bit was still in shade from the trees along the river bank. I took a couple of photos but like many of my landscape photos they don’t do it justice. Perhaps that is one of the reasons for being keen on wildlife photography. With that you can look at your photos back home and see things you hadn’t seen before, like seeing little insects on the flower next to the butterfly you took the photo of.

I would like to be able to identify the various grasses in the meadow but I am going to be content with calling them all Grass, even though they look very different.

The fist glimpse I got of the foals looked as though they were very unsteady on their feet. I could only see part of them through the trees and by the time I had moved to see them better they were lying down.

The Rabbit in the Ford House Farm field was surprisingly close to the footpath so I obliged it by taking its photo. Normally there are several further up the slope towards Otley Road.

This is the Curtonotus aulicus Ground Beetle which is a nocturnal seed eating beetle that lives under stones.

8 o’clock on a summer’s morning in the Wild Flower Meadow is certainly not nighttime so I was surprised that so many were about, but if mating was the motivator perhaps it is not unusual.

The one with its head stuck in the Creeping Thistle seed head was taken at 10:45. It was not moving so perhaps it had decide to sleep. Or is it two?

After walking along the path through The Wild Flower Meadow I started looking at the river and spotted the white of a Little Egret through the leaves – they frame it nicely. It then flew off and I thought that was the last I would see of it.

Perhaps I was wrong in thinking I had scared it away because it only flew a few yards and I managed to get more photos of it from the footbridge.

I mentioned in a previous post that when you see Little Egrets on their own they look like a decent sized bird – Little Egret on New Year’s Day and back then quoted the weight range of Little Egrets and Mallard. A Mallard can be almost 4 1/2 times the weight of a Little Egret.

In the photo of the Egret at the weir with the Mallard their size difference is noticeable. For those familiar with Father Ted – the Little Egret is small, the Mallards are far away.

Another Little Egret was down river from the bridge until it flew over the bridge squawking and dive-bombing the other one. They then both flew up river. One landed in a tree while the other continued up river.

The bird flying with its wing tips almost touching the water is a Black Headed Gull. There seems to be a solitary one at each weir.

When near the gate to DMNR a dragonfly buzzed around and I was lucky to see where it landed. I think it is a female Common Darter. It was only after looking at the photos at home that I noticed that it is eating a fly of some kind. In one of the other photos you can see a wing.

Carder Bees certainly seem to be the common one on the Wild Flower Meadow.

The rest of the photos are from along the riverside path from the footbridge and into Denso Marston Nature Reserve.

Quite a few Ladybirds are around but Larvae and Pupae have been more difficult to spot

I have taken photos of horse riders on the path and footbridge before but this time there were motorbikes going along it and up to the canal towpath. It sounded like they then went along the towpath towards Shipley.