Signs of Spring and Kingfishers at Forest Farm

Forest Farm Reserve near Cardiff is a great place to see and photograph kingfishers and the 'Friends of Forest Farm' who manage the site have placed branches by the two pond hides to encourage the birds to fish close to the hides. For such a small area, there is a surprising variety of habitat, from ponds, streams and a canal to woodland and meadow and all this encourages a heathy diversity of wildlife on the outskirts of Wales's capital city.

Although last Wednesday's visit was disappointing for Kingfishers, there was plenty of interest from other species of wildlife enthusiastically gearing up for spring and the chance of offspring!

It was good to see so many toads in and around the ponds. Frogs and toads have seriously declined in numbers over the past few decades but were definitely thriving at Forest farm, with many males swimming the ponds on the lookout for the much larger females, fat with eggs.

Many birds were busy nest building and using the pond edges as a source of moss to use as a lining material, warm and insulating for the soon to arrive clutch of eggs.


Moorhen too were collecting oversized pieces of reed to build up their untidy raft of a nest among the reed stems. The aim seems to be to build the nest high out of the water to guard against any rise in water levels and possible flooding of the nest.

Because moorhen, like coots, are so common, they are usually treated with disdain by bird watchers but they are attractive, colourful birds and amusing to observe going about their daily lives.

A close up view of a moorhen shows it to be subtly coloured in soft greys and browns with silver trim and set off with scarlet forehead shield and bill tipped with yellow and complementary red eyes.

Moorhen feed on plants gathered from the bottom of the pond or river and dive from the surface to reach their food.

Diving is a slightly ungainly process for moorhen and their oversized, yellow webbed feet seem more of a hindrance than a help but they only have to reach the usually shallow bottom and if they fail, well, they can try again.











Still waiting for the kingfisher, a number of other birds and animals came close to the hide, some too close to photograph. There was a time, in fact, when there was more going on inside the hide than outside. Robins, great and blue tits, a blackbird, a squirrel and even a nuthatch, all after a few crumbs from the sandwich box. The mallard stayed outside though!

Finally, a young magpie landed on the kingfisher's perch and posed for a photograph. Not the halcyon blue beauty I was hoping for but since magpies are surprisingly difficult to catch in any kind of pose, a satisfying shot for me.

Amphibious Affairs

Back at the pond edge there was toad drama as a big female and her chosen paramour were being persistently hassled by a second male trying to get in on the action and oust the current suitor.

 The female was hopping as fast as she could with her amorous partner riding piggy-back and she clearly wasn't interested in a replacement but the second male kept on trying to get aboard.

But every time the intruder tried his luck, the first male kicked violently to throw him off, before they continued their bid for privacy. 

Male frogs and toads, certainly in Europe, always outnumber females, so there is fierce competition to fertilise the eggs. So desperate are the males that large numbers of them will sometimes cling to a female and drown her because she cannot reach the surface to breathe.

And the kingfisher?

Well, the kingfisher did visit the perch twice while I waited but was too skittish to stay for a photograph. There were a couple of male buzzards battling for the skies above the reserve for a couple of hours so they might have spooked some of the birds including my quarry. So no kingfisher images today but here is one of the images from my much more fortunate previous visit a month earlier as a reminder of the beauty of this spectacular bird.

Herons eat fish and frogs. Don't they?

I was photographing a family of warthogs at the busy waterhole of the Voi Wildlife Lodge in Southern Kenya last year when my attention, and my lens, was diverted by this swallow landing on the muddy bank. The bird had clearly been injured in some way, though I did not see how, and was flapping about, trying desperately to take off.

I was not the only one to notice it. One of the many great blue herons fishing in the shallow waters had seen it too and strode menacingly over to investigate.

I assumed that herons hunted for fish and the occasional frog or toad but it was clear that this heron was willing to try a more varied diet.

The bird grabbed the swallow in its sharp beak, dunked the hapless bird briefly in the water and, with only a little trouble because of the bird's size, swallowed it whole!

With a flick of its wings the heron strode off, looking very pleased with itself and carried on fishing.

For life in the African bush, a small slip can see you being rapidly recycled!

Goats of the Avon Gorge

Bristol's Avon Gorge is a nationally important botanical site, containing several rare plant species, some of which are found nowhere else, such as the Bristol onion, Bristol rock cress and several species of whitebeam. When sheep grazing came to an end in the area at the beginning of the 20th century, the open grasslands of the gorge slopes, clearly seen in old prints, became covered in scrub and woodland to the detriment of grassland species.

 So, as part of a project to try to reverse the spread of woodland and encourage a return to open grassland, six white feral goats, all billies, were introduced by Bristol City Council Council and Natural England in 2011.

The goats are now a firmly established feature of 'The Gulley', a steep, fenced cleft in the Bristol side of the gorge, containing some fine south facing slopes with carboniferous limestone cliffs and outcrops. Ideal conditions for a wide variety of herbaceous flora to flourish, given the freedom from encroachment by woody plants. Trees and scrub were cleared from large areas of the four hectare site and it is the goats' job to prevent their regrowth. The goats are quite at home on the steep rocky slopes, have plenty to eat and their physical wellbeing is looked after by the vets at nearby Bristol zoo.

These handsome bearded bachelors forage as a close knit group and clearly get along well. When I photographed them in the early spring of 2015, they were touchingly affectionate during their bouts of playful sparring.

Plough Snails - fastest molluscs on the planet?

This is a favourite image of mine. Taken almost ten years ago on lonely Struisbai beach on the southern coast of South Africa, it's an extreme wideangle shot of a stranded medusa jellyfish being attacked by plough snails, Bullia rhodostoma.

Jos and I seemed to be the only humans on this three mile Indian Ocean beach that day but we shared it with plenty of wildlife. The vast carcass of a long-dead humpback whale attracted scavenging gulls and crows to its rotting blubber, there were lots of other birds around and the beach was littered with jellyfish thrown up by the surf.

Passing a beached blue medusa, we noticed many, what we thought to be hermit crabs, scurrying towards the hapless jellyfish. Looking closer, we were amazed to find that they were marine snails, some three or four centimetres in length.

They moved across the sand at an unbelievable rate for gastropods, 'ploughing' towards the medusa, until eventually, there was quite a crowd of them, scrabbling over each other to get at the jellyfish and piercing its outer membrane with their probosci to feed on the soft tissues.

This short video clip, courtesy of Wikipedia, illustrates beautifully the 'breast stroke' action of the large muscular foot, enabling the snail to move along wet sand at a rate of several metres per minute.

To get anything better than a record shot, I needed to get low down and close to the action, so I used a 10-22mm lens at 10mm (16mm full frame equivalent) and shot from its minimum focus distance. I had to be quick too, because that surf, which looks a long way off due to the wide angle of the lens, was pretty close and throwing waves up the beach beyond the medusa on the receding tide.

Jos's less than flattering shot of me doing this shoot demonstrates the indignity and discomfort we nature photographers must sometimes suffer in pursuit of our craft.

                                                                                                               

Clifton Suspension Bridge's 150th Birthday

  

A Great Night for Bristol

Sunday 7th marked 150 years since the symbol of Bristol, the Clifton Suspension Bridge, first opened to the public. A hundred thousand people were expected to turn up for the firework display at 7.00pm and judging by the enormous crowds at every possible spot within sight of the bridge, that figure may have been reached. The crowds were treated to a stunning twelve minute display of imaginative and colourful pyrotechnics, when palm trees, gigantic feathers, even Niagara Falls appeared over the Avon Gorge. Isembard Kingdom Brunel, who designed the bridge and in whose honour it was completed after his death, would have been proud.

Oystercatchers on the Glamorgan Coast

Promising weather was forecast for Thursday, so I drove to the Glamorgan Heritage Coast in South Wales, just over an hour from home. It's a wonderful stretch of Jurassic coast backed by dramatic Blue Lias cliffs, with wide, clean, sandy beaches and dramatic headlands such as Nash Point.

A watery November sun shone low over the Bristol channel the whole day and although the tide was on the way up, it allowed me a few hours for some pleasurable beach photography. I had walked about three miles along the beach between Nash Point and Dunraven Bay before turning back along the beach towards my car. By this time the tide was pretty high, up to the boulder line under the cliffs, and dusk was coming on but I knew there was a ladder up the cliffs further along so stuck to the beach.

I'd spotted a few gulls and pairs of oystercatchers on the way out and snapped a couple of unsatisfactory distant shots of them with the 300mm + 1.4x converter set up I had with me, just for the practice. On the way back, with dusk fast approaching, I had given all thoughts of further photographs when I came across this flock of perhaps fifty birds settling down to roost amongst the rocks. They were right in my path and I had no choice but to disturb them but I managed to get the telephoto strapped to the camera before I slowly stalked up to them. They eventually flew off and I managed to grab a few flight shots, of which this is the best.

There is lovely soft evening light in the image and the birds are fortuitously turned with wings mostly on the downbeat to show off their striking black and white plumage but we can still see the red eyes, orange bills and just the odd pair of dolly pink legs. It's a habitat shot too, giving a feel for the wild coastline and the surf. But what makes it stand out from the others in the shoot, is the slight separation of birds in the middle that grabs the attention and saves the shot from being just a jumble of flying birds.

Forest Giants at Dawn

This image was captured at dawn from a lookout tower overlooking the primary rainforest of the Danum Valley in Malaysian Borneo.

On the previous day's trek, I had discussed with our guide Dennys the images I had in mind of forest trees emerging from morning mist. He said he knew a place where we might see just such a thing and that he could organise that but we would need to make an early start. And so it was that we were up at 4 am for the thirty kilometre drive from our hotel, the Borneo Rainforest Lodge, to the Danum Valley Research Station tower to catch the dawn. Indeed it was still a moonlit night as Dennys pulled up at the lookout in the lodge's white four wheel drive Toyota. 

Strangely, the tower's three stories were brightly lit by electric lanterns and there was a Toyota identical to ours parked outside. 'Is someone else here from the hotel?' I said to Dennys in surprise. 'Yes, that's the chef' he replied. He had secretly laid on a chef and waiter from the hotel just to cook breakfast for Jos and myself!

On the top floor of the lookout, a table had been set for two and the chef was already preparing to cook up a delicious meal. I set up my tripod and and we waited for the magic of the tropical dawn to unfold. 

We were not disappointed. As the sun crept above the horizon, the valley was flooded with soft golden light and trees and distant hills emerged and disappeared again in the shifting inversion clouds shrouding the forest.

I spent an enjoyable hour or so shooting with a telephoto lens to pick out sections of the constantly changing scene, my attention caught now and then by the waiter's 'would you prefer tea or coffee sir?' or 'would you prefer your eggs fried or scrambled madam?' and not until the sun was well above the horizon and rapidly burning off the mist did we sit down to one of the most unique and delicious breakfasts we have ever experienced.