Cornucopia of wildlife at Ouse Fen 02

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Part two of my little expedition to Ouse Fen Nature Reserve, which finds me on the lookout for its smaller inhabitants as they hide in undergrowth, doing their best to keep out of my way as I trample through their habitat.

Which makes it sound like I'm engaged in some sort of wanton destruction of their little homes, and in a sense I am, and I'm glad. No of course I'm not, but there is so much happening in the shrubs and the grasses, that just the act of walking among them reveals a bounty of wildlife, as they scurry or flap their way to safety.

So a keen eye allows you to follow their journey, and hopefully snap them as they temporarily rest among the brush, it's actually a very absorbing way to spend some time, as it engages you completely. No wonder grasshopper is the name of a yoga position.

Cornucopia of wildlife at Ouse Fen 01

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Another visit to Ouse Fen Nature Reserve, a place I can’t seem to keep away from at the moment, mainly thanks the plethora of insect life that throng the flower meadows this time of year.

So cue some close up images of moths, butterflies, ladybirds, wasps, crickets, grasshoppers, skippers, spiders and dragonflies.

I’ve stuck half of them in this post and the rest will be in the next one, so check back in a couple of days for more colourful insect goodness.

Let the show begin…

Here be dragon(flies) and a damselfly

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Following on from my recent, and relatively unsuccessful trip to get some images of dragonflies, I decided to give it another go, but at a different location. And thankfully it worked out a lot better. 

These little beauties were a lot more cooperative, and sat still for minutes at a time in some cases. Which meant I wasn’t left to ineptly flounder about, in a bumbling clownish manner, in an effort to track them on the wing. I could take my sweet time about it, within reason of course.

As an added bonus, there were a few different species about as well, so I could get a bit of variety in the shots. I still can’t decide if dragonflies up close are the stuff of nightmares, or incredibly beautiful, but whatever they may or may not be, they are certainly an interesting subject to photograph, and I was there for a good couple of hours or so, snapping away. 

So I give you a small selection of dragonflies, and a beautiful little damselfly to finish off with, and that is all I can give you.

Beautiful blue butterflies

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In my recent excursions to photograph the insects that are about and about in abundance this time of year, I have had an eye out for blue butterflies, but I’ve not actually come across any, and the more I didn’t see any, the more I’ve been hankering to discover some.

The common blue would be the species I’d most likely find, as it is the most widespread of the blue butterflies in Britain, and as the name suggests, it is one of the most common butterflies in Europe. 

Barnack Hills & Holes butterflies & flowers

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Continuing on with my exploration of small British wildlife, I decided to pay a visit to Barnack Hills & Holes Nature Reserve to see what diminutive creatures I could find, and because it was supposed to have quite the display of wild flowers this time of year.

Formed from the rubble of a medieval quarry, the reserve is one of Britain’s most important wildlife sites. Encapsulating the phrase, small but perfectly formed, the site covers just 50 acres, but its meadowland is designated a Special Area of Conservation, a National Nature Reserve, a Nature Conservation Review site and last but by no means least, a Special Area of Conservation. Partly due to the fact that the orchid rich grassland is very rare, and makes up over half of this type of habitat in Cambridgeshire.

Holme Fen Butterflies

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Last weekend I paid a visit to one of my favourite places, namely Holme Fen Nature Reserve. This beautiful woodland oozes atmosphere, and is a beautiful place to visit any time of the year, mainly thanks to its dense forest of silver birches, which have to be one of the most charismatic of all the UK trees.

I won't go into the history of the Holme Fen, as fascinating as it is, and although there are a smattering of pictures in this post of the woodland, I have taken plenty more through the various seasons, all of which can be found here, here, here & here.

No, I was off to get some images of the summer wildlife that abounds in this Natural England run nature reserve, in particular, the various butterflies that call this place home while they are on the wing.

There were thousands of these colourful little flappers galavanting about the place, twirling around each other and flitting hither and thither above my head, and sometimes on it, if I was standing particularly still, trying to get a picture.

Below are a selection of images taken that day, when the butterflies were at rest, or sipping nectar, predominantly from the blossom of blackberry bushes, of which Holme Fen boasts an impressive number.

Fen Drayton nature reserve

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Over the weekend I took a trip to Fen Drayton, to visit the RSPB run nature reserve that can be found there. I was still on a hunt for wildlife and I thought I might find some suitable natural nuggets within its environs.

There wasn’t as much birdlife as I thought there might be, but I made up for it with some shots along the River Great Ouse, which runs through the reserve, and from rummaging through the undergrowth on the hunt for smaller quarry.

The reserve, a 108-hectare area comprised of several lakes formed from exhausted sand and gravel pits, is home to around 190 bird species, many of whom must have been in hiding when I visited. In times of heavy rain and river flooding, the entire reserve goes under water, including car parks and most rights of way.

It is planned that the reserve will become part of a much larger wetland area along the River Great Ouse, linking to the Hanson-RSPB Wetland Project at Ouse Fen, which should become Britain's largest reedbed within the next 30 years. In fact it was at Ouse Fen that the images from my last two blog posts were taken. Here and here.

Colourful insects & flowers in close up

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A couple of days ago I took a trip to Ouse Fen, an RSPB run nature reserve, in the hope of getting some shots of the abundant bird life that takes up residence there this time of year. It is home to a multitude of geese, ducks, swans, gulls, coots, terns, grebes and cormorants, along with a few herons. Some of which have travelled for thousands of miles to breed on its lakeland islands.

Unfortunately, even though it’s easy enough to get pretty close to the colonies, I just didn’t have the capabilities with the lenses I own, to really get close enough for any meaningful images. So after endless whirling around, trying to follow the birds as they flew overhead, and attempting to catch the terns as they speared into the water on the hunt for fish, I decided that I was wasting my time, and the birds could go shove it

Instead I concentrated on the local insect life, as there were a plentitude of wild flowers about, which were attracting an abundance of butterflies and other arthropods, so I aimed my camera at the ground instead and got a few shots of these colourful citizens of the shrubbery…

Macro flower photography

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I hadn’t used my light tent for a little while, so the other afternoon I thought it would be a good idea to give it some air, carry out a bit of macro flower photography, and put together a quick tutorial on the subject while I was at it.