While waiting for the arrival of some jets, we were treated to a little bit of wildlife spotting. A hawk had been hunting over the fields in our vicinity, but it started to head our way and I grabbed a bunch of shots as it came by out of habit. One of the group checked his pictures out while we continued to wait and noticed that the hawk was carrying its next meal. It appears a rabbit had been caught out in the open and was now no more. The nature of life in the wild, I guess.
Mum and I took a trip down to Juanita Bay to see what sort of wildlife was out and about. There was plenty of activity with both eagles and ospreys flying over the water looking for their next meal. At one stage, an eagle had caught a small fish and took it to a log in the water to enjoy. It seems that one of the ospreys decided that this could not stand and that the eagle should give up its catch. The osprey swooped down repeatedly at the eagle trying to get it spooked and to maybe leave the fish behind. The eagle was definitely annoyed by the osprey but was not inclined to move. This went on for a while but eventually the osprey realized it was futile and moved on.
The flowers were out on some of the plants in our front yard and they were attracting the bees, so I decided to try again to get some bee shots. Rather than try and follow the bees around the flowers, I decided to see the camera up on a mount aligned with one flower and wait for the bees to come there. I used a cable release so I could sit back a bit and wait. This did require the plant to stay steady which, when the wind was blowing, was far from guaranteed.
I was sitting so still for a long time as I waited that a rabbit came walking across the yard to nibble some leaves that were by my feet. Since I wasn’t moving, it was totally oblivious to me. Rather than spook it by trying to get my phone out to photograph it, I let it eat in peace. It wandered off soon enough.
The bees dutifully showed up in my flower from time to time. I wasn’t sure how well the shots were coming out since I was just triggering with the cable release when things were in roughly the right place. I didn’t know whether the autofocus was going to choose the bee or part of the plant. There were plenty of misses, but we did get a few good shots where the bees were in shot, in focus and interesting enough. I was pleasantly surprised how many shots actually worked out. I had been quite pessimistic when taking the shots, so this was more successful than I had expected.
I have put together posts for various animals that we saw during our trip to Kenya and Tanzania. We also saw lots of birds. Most of them I had no idea what they were, but our guides did a great job of telling us what we were seeing. Whether I can remember them all now, is a different story. Fortunately, I think I keyworded them shortly after we returned so I do have a chance. Rather than talk about the various different bird, here is a compilation of images of some of the ones we saw during our time away.
I have been meaning to post some more otter shots for ages, but various things came first, and I have postponed this one a number of times – when I say postponed, I mean postpone even writing something as opposed to postponing the actual posting. This otter was busily moving around Juanita Bay as it searched for its next meal. I initially saw it coming across the water towards me. It swam around the inlet before heading to land so I could see it closer up in the water.
It then went back around the headland, and I thought it might be continuing off into the main bay, but it turned around and came out of the water onto the land near us. A quick shake to dry off and then a bit more of searching the ground for any hint of a snack. It didn’t last long. Soon it was back in the water and out towards the open water hunting for something tasty. I hope it found something good.
We stopped for a small snack at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park after our walk. We were heading to lunch later, but you don’t want your energy to drop so a cake of some sort is a necessity. The tables around the café provided plenty of food for the local jackdaw population and they were very keen to get whatever fell from the plates of the customers. With the sun on them, they looked really cool. I didn’t know what they were at the time, but the grey heads were quite distinctive, and I did a search later on t identify them. Funny to learn these things so long after I had lived in the UK.
Richmond Park is famous for its deer. You don’t have to go far in the park to come across some. They seem pretty relaxed despite the presence of so many people nearby but I imagine it is a long time since anyone in the park was hunting them, so they don’t see us as a threat anymore. As we went for a stroll, we came across a few groups of deer busy munching away. Occasionally, they would look at us as we got closer but their lack of interest most of the time was obvious!
I was walking along the street in Nanaimo and noticed a bush with branches that had what looked like spider webs on them. I stopped to take a look and realized that it wasn’t spiders, it was caterpillars. (I should note at this point, that there are people who read this blog that will already be turning off because they do not enjoy my posts that involve bugs!) I don’t know much about caterpillars, but I am assuming that this was a nest of some sort for the next generation of caterpillars. However, there were plenty of them on the outside crawling around. It was quite a strange looking sight. I couldn’t resist getting some shots of them before heading on.
The River Test really should be considered multiple rivers because it splits and rejoins as it moves across the Hampshire countryside. You can cross all sorts of minor streams, but you do also get some larger crossings where the river is well defined. One of these is the road to Longstock. There is a weir across the river just upstream of the bridge and it seemed to be flowing pretty well when we were there. We had experienced lovely weather, but I guess quite a bit of rain had preceded our arrival. There was a single swan on the river, and it seemed to be making some effort to move upstream.
We had the robins visiting the garden when we stayed in Stockbridge, but they were rather reticent about being around when we were there. They tended to disappear whenever they realized we were watching them. During our visit to Hinton Ampner, we came across a rather more bold member of the family. This one was sitting in a hedge right next to us when I realized it was there. I got a shot before it moved but it only repositioned to a perch close to us. A brave little fella and very cute.
