Rutland Water birds

Whilst on holiday in the Rutland area between the 7th and 14th of August, we visited Rutland Water for some birdwatching. I hadn't been before, and beforehand I was told that ospreys could be seen there. We wandered round the hides to see what we could see, but first, I set up my camera in the visitor centre of Rutland water to get some photos of various birds.

Amongst the usual species you'd expect to see at a feeding station, we saw some Tree Sparrows, a bird which I hadn't seen before. I knew what I was looking for though so they were easy to spot, and very different from House Sparrows. I know that this bird is currently in strong decline, so it really was great to see them so close up.

Sorry, but basically all of the photos I have taken are record shots. I still think its worth sharing them though...

We then wandered round to the Opsrey hide. Whilst walking there, I was amazed to see a Weasel run right across the path in front of me. I really was so lucky to see one so close. I was unable to get a photo as it was there for only 5 seconds or so. When we first got to the hide, we saw everything but Ospreys...

The first bird I saw was an adult water rail, just in front of the hide. It looked like perfect habitat for the bird. None of my photos were particularly great, but I was still happy to get at least a few decent photos.

It was great to also see a juvenile water rail too...

Other birds such as this sedge warbler could also be seen from the hide (please excuse the record shot):

And another record shot of a reed bunting:

Eventually, we saw the ospreys from the hide, a couple of hours after we had got there- they spend much of their time flying around the lake out of view from the hide. The 3 juveniles which fledged the nest earlier in the year still used the nest as a perch and spent plenty of time sitting on it whilst the adults were out catching fish. By now, the ospreys will have started to migrate back to Africa. If you want to follow the osprey diary, click here. Here is my record shot of the osprey nest with the fledged juveniles sitting on it. The third juvenile was on a perch to the left of the nest, which cannot be seen in the photo below.

It really was great to see the ospreys here, along with the other people in the hide, especially since, despite their recent increase in numbers, they are still quite a rare sight in the UK. The nest really was too far away to get a close up photo with my camera, but I sharpened the photo on the computer to make the scene a bit clearer. Whilst looking for the flying adult opsreys (which we did see, but I was unable to photograph), lapwings could be seen flying fairly close to the hide.

I liked the effect I managed to get on this photo, despite the fact it wasn't intentional. Since we were so glued to the opsrey hide, we ran out of time and were unable to visit any of the other hides - maybe next time, eh?

Bird updates

Unfortunately, a bit of bad news on the bird front in our garden recently. About a month ago, we found that the robin nestbox at the end of the garden had fallen off its tree. A pair of robins had built a nest and layed eggs without us even noticing before the box fell off the tree, and the eggs were smashed It really is incredible how secretive the birds must have been to build a nest without us seeing birds enter the box once...

Whilst this nest has been a failure, I'm guessing this robin pair have nested again somewhere else successfully. We have a couple of young robins in the garden so they must have already had one brood earlier on in the year.

The birds have generally been feeding quite frequently recently, robins included. One of the species which has visited a lot has been the greenfinch, which has been good to see, because over the last 2 or 3 years we have generally seen fewer of them.

The greenfinches have been sharing the feeders very nicely though, and other birds like Blue Tits have been coming in to feed too.

Blackbirds have also been fairly frequent, and this female has been around all year. She seems to have distinctive markings...

The male blackbirds have been visiting too...

The video below shows a video of a greenfinch and a blue tit feeding together.

Over the last few weeks, I've been having problems loading my posts on blogger, so I've been unable to finally get this post done until now.

Getting used to an SLR

Over the last few months, I've been getting used to my new DSLR camera, and its been great fun. Just this week, I thought I would take some photos and video footage of various plants around our garden. I have just bought a 75-300mm lens, but I haven't really used it much yet, so I thought I would first share with you some of the stuff I have managed to capture with my 18-55mm kit lens.

One of the many reasons why I wanted the camera I now own, is because it is capable of capturing full HD video. This means that I won't have to buy a separate video camera. I have been experimenting with the video function for a while now, and I thought I would just share a few videos I have taken over the last few weeks. They aren't that great, but I'm still learning how to get decent footage.

I've found that the most practical size to capture the video is 720p, rather than 1080p, mostly because the file sizes are more manageable and also because most computers are unable to play 1080p video smoothly. Besides, on a small video player on my blog, the difference in quality between the two dimensions is pretty much unnoticeable.

The Alliums which have been growing near our bird feeders, have just finished flowering, but the video below shows one of the flowers a couple of weeks ago. As you can see, these flowers really attracted the bees...



Elsewhere in the garden, other flowers which we planted earlier in the year have also just finished flowering. We have had large areas of wild flowers towards the end of the garden (which we planted). Instead of showing you videos of these, I thought I'd show you some of the flowers from plants we didn't grow- basically, they're weeds...



And there's more...



When I had run out of flowers to video, I decided to get a quick video of the reflections on the bird bath...



Thats all for now, i'll probably post again either tonight or tomorrow with some more video footage. Anyway, enjoy any sunshine you get today, cause its looking pretty grey here at the moment!