Hells Mouth + Godrevy

Been out photographing again today. This time with house mates, we went to the north coast of visiting Hells Mouth and Godrevy, starting at Hell Mouth where I wanted to see if I could spot the Kestrel family that have been seen there recently.

While there we had some lovely views of 5 Grey seal pups on the beach and as we were just leaving we saw two of the Kestrels fly over which was fantastic to see even if we were unable to photograph them.

Grey Seal - Halichoerus grypus

Moving on to Godrevy we were mainly focused on getting some landscape images, it was a bright day which made it hard to capture images out to sea (towards the sun) but with the help of a ND filter and a Polarising filter we made do and got some fantastic images.

Landscape from Godrevy

Hopefully during my time here I will capture many more constantly improving on the ones I took previously.

First day out in Cornwall

First morning out in Falmouth, not the nicest of days but it had been too long and I was having withdrawal madness from the lack of photographs I had taken. I first headed to Pendennis Point to see if the mist had created any interesting landscapes unfortunately as I arrived it started to throw it down and so I decided to go for a walk without my camera just to see if anything had changed over summer and if I did see a good spot I could quickly run back to the car grab my camera and then go and shoot the photo but due to the thickness of the mist there it all seemed quite plan.

View From Swanpool Beach 

So I headed for Swanpool one of my favourite spots all last year. This time I walked around with my camera with my Canon 70-200mm F2.8 IS on which would allow me to capture images hand held even in the low light. While there saw a number of species out on the lake including Tufted Ducks, Mute Swans, Mallard and Great Crested Grebes. More interesting to me how ever were all the spiders dotted around the edge of the lake in the middle of their webs this creating a great photo opportunity.

Araneus diadematus

Hopefully it will dry up soon and I will be out again seeing what I can find.

Back From Africa

Hi everyone, just got back from Africa. Got some great photos been doing a bit of editing while I've been out there but need to load all 3040 photos onto my mac and look at them properly. I will try and upload a few every couple of days and in a few weeks will hopefully have put together a short video giving you all an idea of what Kruger National Park is like!!

Here is a link to two I have edited and uploaded to get the ball rolling!!

http://500px.com/OliverWilks 

(its the first two images)

Warnham LNR & Arundel WWT

After the rain pasted I headed to Warnham LNR with one aim the Kingfisher (Alcedines), sadly the one day when the reserve is dead quiet is the day that he doesn't turn up, while I was sitting there waiting for him I did however take some photos of some Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) as they cleaned themselves and flapped their wings. A thing to note and I wondered if anyone else had noticed this, that the Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) have had a baby boom this year they are everywhere and in 10x the numbers this year compared to others it seems, I could be going mad but that's what it seems to me.

Mallard - Anas platyrhynchos

Today me and Dad went to Arundel WWT in search of the Water Voles (Arvicola amphibius), it didn't take long for us to find one and we were able to capture some great images of him until he disappeared under the broad walk, we later found another curled up in a stub of wood but was impossible to get a clear view on him sleeping in his little nest.

Water Vole - Arvicola amphibius

Water Vole - Arvicola amphibius

Red-backed shrike & Warnham LNR

I started the day with the thinking I was going to Nymans gardens then off to Warnham LNR but as I packed the car Dad called to say he has found the Red-backed shrike (Lanius collurio) and said I should go down and take some photos, being such a rare site to see in the UK I couldn't say no, hopefully this isn't the first sign of becoming a twitcher.

As I arrived at Bazehill Road, Rottingdean I traveled up as far as I could before having to park my car in a lay-by and walking the rest of the way up the hill. As I walked along the road I spotted some other photographers looking out into a field. This is when you know your in luck as chance is are they have done the hard work and found it for you, truth be told they had. So I stayed there awhile and photographed the Shrike sitting on the fence only 15 yards away.

Red-backed shrike - Lanius collurio

After photographing the Shrike I met up with my parents had some lunch and then headed off to Warnham LNR. This trip to Warnham was in search for the Kingfisher (Alcedines), although I didn't managed a great photo I got one of one a tad blurred which is shame but while waiting a Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea) landed quite close and walked out in the shallows before flying off which allowed me to get a good shot of it and I was practicing on some mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) that were flapping their wings as they washed themselves.

Female Mallard - Anas platyrhynchos

Grey Heron -  Ardea cinerea

Day on Portsmouth

Had a great day yesterday down in Portsmouth with Mum, after a trip around the shops at Gunwarf Quays we headed to the local nature reserve at Farlington Marshes, although more of an afternoon stroll then a photography outing we spotted a pair of Whinchat (Saxicola rubetra) which was quite exciting as I hadn't got a photo of them before.

Whinchat - Saxicola rubetra

From there we spotted a flock of starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) all flying in formation over the marsh and normally surround them when they landed were small (10+) Goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis) which even with my best attempted I was unable to photograph.

As we came to the end of our walk someone told us of an Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) which had landed and was eating a fish in the marshes somewhere, he told us the generally direction and we kept our eyes at, at first I spotted a Sparrow Hawk (Accipiter nisus) flying above but soon after I noticed two other larger birds flying in the distance, with the help of over exposing the image to brighten the birds and using the x10 feature on my camera display we could see that there were the two ospreys sadly way way way to far to photograph but lovely to see.

Swollow - Hirundinidae