What a treat last night, a Kestrel hovering not 50 yds from where we were parked. The light was fading though, so the photos aren't great, (to camera boffs they are full of noise) and these are the best of the bunch,
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I used adobe photo editor to reduce the noise and soften the look.
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Breakfast at Sunnyhills Farm Shop, talk about a good plateful. It was delicious and I struggled to finish the egg, 2 bacon rashers, black pudding, baked beans, 2 sausages, tomatoes and mushrooms. Also, on the plate were two slices of thick wholemeal toast with lashings of butter. Sheer indulgence, 'cos I haven't eaten butter for years. Needless to say, we skipped lunch and only started to feel hungry by late evening!
We set the sat nav for Kielder Forest. About 40 mile from Belford it took the best part of the morning. The visitor center was surprisingly quiet, we did find out that a Red squirrel hide was but a 20 minute walk from the car park. Seeing them in the wild would be marvellous, we have only seen them the once in Scotland and that was because they were fed regularly at a wildlife park.
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Kielder Water
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Note the lovely blue skies.
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The walk took us through the forest and past the reservoir. The hide was eventually found, we settled down and waited. Plenty of birds turned up, but not a sign of the squirrel. In fact, the only interest in the squirrel box had been from a woodpecker. Gave up in the end, it wasn't to be again!
Tonight we have gone into a proper site with all facilities and even the showers are open. I was going to leave having a shower until after dinner but when the owner came round and told us to keep all windows and doors shut after 6 pm because that's when the midges are at their worst, and to make sure lights in the toilet block are switched off before you open the door because those midges are drawn to the light, and more importantly, want to feed you, and being eaten alive would not be good advertising for the camp site! My plans were hastily changed, and the shower was had early.
Our idea of setting the alarm for 1 pm had also gone out of the window. It's supposed to be a supermoon tonight, plus we were hoping to see a few more stars than normal as this was, after all, the dark sky region. But it started to rain, even though the day had started so well. In fact, right up to 4 pm it was blue skies with the occasional weird cloud. Signs of things to come, maybe?
I had to make a dash back to MB as it had just started spitting. Maybe this rain will keep the midges away. Some good could come out of it after all.
This area is renowned for the lack of Wi-Fi. I can only do this post because of the free Wi-Fi from the site. So if I go quiet for a few days, (Ian said thank God for that) you will know why.
And so to the wildlife,
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Coal Tit
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| Siskin |
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Stock Dove
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Pied Woodpecker
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| Chaffinch |
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Green Veined I think
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Chimney Sweeper Moth
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2 comments:
Lovely photos, you could try sharpen and contrast, instead of noise and soften on your Kestrel pic maybe.
Ann Makemson
I tried that, Ann, but the contrast darkened the photos too much and sharpening made them look unnatural. The camera I use is a bridge camera Lumix FZ2000 and hasn't quite got the capabilities of a DSLR. Low light photography makes the photos look grainy (noise)but what I like about this camera is the 20x optical zoom lens equivalent to 24-480mm with an f/2.8-4.5 aperture. Instead of carrying two cameras which I did in the past, one for wildlife photography a 100-300mm and the other for general purpose 24-72mm, this one does it all.
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