Goosander's again

Yesterday the weather forecast was for a nice day. As we had to be over in Snowdonia, change over day at the holiday cottage, I thought I'd re visit the Goosander's that live below Snowdon. We had some lovely light first thing, but has been the case all winter it wasn't long before the rain clouds rolled in.
While the light lasted it was lovely to watch them fishing, they must have been catching really small fry or water insects, whatever it was they were too small to see but they had certainly found a feast.
Below are a few shots taken yesterday. The male has a green head the female a rusty colour.

You can see the teeth in the bill to aid with gripping fish.

Peering into the water looking for fish

Female's tail just about to go under water.

Lovely early morning light, this is the male.

Goosander's

I'm gradually catching up with processing the images from last weekend. This blog is about the Goosanders we photographed on a lake in the heart of Snowdonia. Unfortunately the light wasn't that great but we managed some ok images. The lake in question is home to Goosander's during the winter months and due to the large population of ducks they have become rather fond of bread, their usual diet is fish. This makes the birds easy to attract, but trying to isolate them surrounded by hoards of ducks and seagull's can be tricky. Below are a few pictures from the morning, the females have the red heads while the males are dark green.

Wild goats of Snowdonia

Sunday morning Ben Andrew and I headed into Snowdonia with two targets, the Goosander and the wild feral goat. This post will deal with the goat's.
The feral goats have roamed Snowdonia since Neolithic times, although it seems likely that during the ages at least some of them will have had their original blood lines watered down.
We found a couple of young kids quite near the road, this gave Ben the chance to get his first pictures. He did need some convincing though that he wasn't photographing somebodies pet's. After taking a few shot's of the youngsters we carried on to see if we could find any more, a group of four adults were half way up an extremely steep slope. The slope was too steep for us to climb with our camera gear so we took a few "environmental" shot's from the bottom.
Hope you like the pictures.

Aberystwyth Starling murmuration

Having dealt with the first trip of the weekend, I'll now deal with the last. The Starling murmuration at Aberystwyth pier, this is the second winter that I have visited the pier and it never fails to impress. After spending the morning in Snowdonia, we travelled down to the seaside town in mid Wales in plenty of time for the flocks to arrive. Half of the promenade was shut, having been covered up by the sand from the beach, all along the sea front windows to B and B's where boarded up, having their windows smashed by the recent fierce storms. With the gale force winds and high tide the day before we did wonder if the starling's would arrive, we needn't have worried and was treated to a wonderful show. As the starling's finally came into roost I used the long lens and slow shutter speed to try and isolate individual birds and show movement during the hustle and bustle of them trying to find their perch.

Knot's and Starling's

My good friend Ben Andrew came up from Bedfordshire to spend the weekend with us. We had set various targets to photograph, wild feral goats, Goosanders, the Starling murmuration at Aberystwyth and the Knot roost at Hoylake.
This post will deal with the two roost's, first up we went to Hoylake to witness the Knot roost. With a spring tide forecast we were hopeful that 14,000 knot would gradually be pushed up the beach towards us. Unfortunately strong winds caused the tide to rise higher than expected and only a small flock of the birds landed in front of us after the tide had turned. We did witness large flock's of Knot flying around the estuary though and can only imagine how spectacular the roost must be if all the elements come together. Definitely one to pay another visit. Special thanks to Ron Thomas for his advice and information while we were there.

Welcome

To go with my new website http://www.richardbowlerwildlifephotography.com I've decided to start a new blog.
The aim of this blog will be to show follower's the wildlife photograph's I take through the year, the stories behind them and maybe even a few tips. Being lucky enough to live on a smallholding high up in the Berwyn mountains I'm able to build reflection pools and feeding stations to attract the local wildlife, not only will I show the images captured but from time to time show some wider shots showing my set ups.
To kick this blog off I'll post some pictures  from last year taken at home to give you a taster. Hope you enjoy.