Christmas and New Year holiday

If you were wondering why I haven't posted in a while, it is because we have been away. But today I have a monster post to make up for it. Firstly to Christmas, and before I forget, Happy Christmas everyone (if a little late). We visited my Grandpa's house in Oldham and had a great time there. Hope all you readers had a fantastic time wherever you were this Christmas. I had the best nature Christmas present I could have hoped for! Read on and find out what it was...

Have you guessed yet... A camera nestbox for the garden. I really was chuffed to bits to unwrap this. I was really surprised with the amount of accessories it came with too. This will be a first for me, as I have never used anything like it before. I will definitely need help putting it up, although I have already tried the camera out inside. I think I also know where the best place to put it up would be. Last year we had Blue Tits nesting inside one of the sections of a House Sparrow Terrace nestbox on the back of the house, so I think if I replaced that nestbox for a year with the new one, there is a decent chance it will get used. Not only this, but the terrace box needs cleaning out, so it needs taking down anyway.

I am very much looking forward to any nestbox activity in the near future. We currently have Blue Tits investigating the House Sparrow terrace, so fingers crossed, we are lucky enough to have residents in the box this year.

While I was in Oldham, I took the time to get outside and take some snaps and videos of my Grandpa's garden (which is remarkably neat). His neighbours feed the birds too, so I got the chance to video some common garden birds too. Below is a video showing the garden and its plants, using my new camera tripod, which coped well with the strong wind. Before now I had been balancing my camera precariously in order to get a video which isn't wobbling around all over the place. Hmmm.... I think I need a bit more practice using the tripod as you will find out from the video.




In his garden, he also has a small pond, with some plants surrounding it. It really looks nice at the end of the garden and helps the local birds too. Again the video below was taken using my tripod which has really been useful so far. Various reed-type plants overhang the pond and make it all look natural. Note the use of the made-up word, "reed-type". This is because I have no idea what the plants actually are!

On this blog, I don't often show scenic photos, but this one and some of the others later on in this post I couldn't resist adding them to this post. The first one below was taken at my Grandpa's house again and is of the sunset. Sometimes it is just luck when a photo opportunity comes up like this one. I just happened to be in the garden at the right time to see it. My camera probably isn't the right thing for taking pictures such as this, but I was happy with the effect anyway.

After a very enjoyable family Christmas, we went up to a town called Barnard Castle in County Durham for a New Year's holiday with family friends and relatives. As most of our holidays involve walks, so did this one, which provided me with lots of bird-watching opportunities as well as photo ones too. And I saw a total of 29 species over the course of Christmas and New Year (most at New Year). Please don't try to read them all at once! They were:

Canada Goose, Pheasant, Grey Heron, Sparrowhawk, Kestrel, Lapwing, Common Gull, Stock Dove, Woodpigeon, Collared Dove, Kingfisher (seen by my cousin when he was fishing), Pied Wagtail, Wren, Dunnock, Robin, Blackbird, Song Thrush, Long-tailed tit, Coal Tit, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Magpie, Jackdaw, Rook, Carrion Crow, House Sparrow, Chaffinch, Goldfinch, Bullfinch.

We visited a number of places while we were there and High Force Waterfall was one of them. It was spectacular. Not only the actual waterfall, but the icicles around the waterfall were stunning. With the waterfall I tried slowing down the shutter speed of my camera to see what would happen to the water effect, and it worked really well, so I have included that below, underneath the one taken at ordinary camera setting speed. We also saw another, smaller waterfall afterwards, which seemed tiny compared with High Force.

I found that some of the photos I took on holiday looked better in black and white. The sheep looked particularly good. But thats probably because they are black and white anyway! Below are a couple which a played around with on a program called Photoshop (which you have probably all heard of anyway. I particularly liked the bottom one.

The highlight of the holiday has to be a visit to a reserviour high in the hills. It had snowed and it was absoloutely freezing. The effect was quite stunning. The air was perfectly still there too. The water was rippling very gently, although some parts of the reserviour had frozen over. It was the perfect opportunity for photography too. As I said earlier, my camera isn't perfect for the job, but I did my best. I couldn't believe it when I saw the no swimming sign next to the frozen over reserviour in the middle of nowhere, and just had to take a picture of it.

All photos taken by me on holiday in Oldham and County Durham