Tenerife 2012

We recently visited Puerto de la Cruz, Northern Tenerife and visited Loro Parque a couple of times due to its close location to our hotel, 4 euros away in a taxi.

I managed plenty of images and would like to share a few with you all. Some are from Loro Parque, some from our hotel gardens and others just from all over Puerto de la Cruz. The Northern Tenerife Lizard was everywhere, quite amazing just how common these stunning lizards are.

Called into the the local squirrel feeding station today for a few hours.

The light levels were terrible, having to use ISO1600 on my canon 50D giving me just 1/125th second on most shots at 400mm something I usually wouldn't even attempt handheld but I had no option. I normally don't go above ISO800 for noise but I think todays turned out ok-ish all things considering.

Had a quick trip out into Northumberland today. The weather was poor as is normal for my days out.

from a photography point today was terrible without any photos worth keeping but from a birding point today was canny. Plenty of swallows about today fighting the strong winds along with martins and the odd swift. We came across a fence with over a dozen moles hanging dead on the barbed wire, no idea why game keepers seem fit to do this especially on a public road?

Futher on and we stumbled across a buzzard resting out of the wind on a dirt road, several chiffchaff could be heard along with willow warblers. We had several cross bills and lots of redpoll too. A peacock butterfly was unexpected as was the number of young birds about today with several young song thrush in the trees.

The best surprise of the day was to find a breeding pair of red squirrels living in a nest box, see below pics.

Waxwings at last!

I'm still rather quiet on the photography front but I plan to change things very soon

I managed a few minutes with the waxwings at Asda Blyth yesterday, they were very tame allowing me to within a couple of meters at times.

A new Seo site for me at Cramlington

Over the past few weeks i've noticed a couple of SEO's in a field at Cramlington with very good vantage points from inside my car so I thought i'd have a go at photographing them. The day I headed across they just didn't want to come very close but I managed a couple of half decent record photos.

Hopefully my next trip across will produce better results.

2nd January 2012

My first real outing of the year was a massive success for me compaired to recent attempts

We headed off to Newbiggin for the Desert Wheatear which showed brilliantly.

The beach also produced some nice Sanderling with a couple of colour ringed individuals amongst them.

We also called into the QEII where the young Whooper swan is back and showing very well too, strangely enough its got a BTO leg ring on it now.
The ring appears to have BTO NAT HIS MUSEUM LONDON stamped onto it.

Happy New Year

As many of you might have noticed I haven't posted since last May mainly due to having no time to get out and about due to moving house and settling into a new job with a new company.

Anyway hopefully i'm back and should be posting regular blog posts once again.

Here's my first of the year with a poor image of a nice young Whopper at the QEII today