Love gulls

Lots of people hate Gulls. They can be messy and aggressive, but they're just doing what nature wants them to do.

I was with my Dad early one morning last week when we stopped to photograph these Black-headed Gulls. (Dad was looking for a Mediterranean Gull but didn't find it).

I think they look great and are brilliant to practice your photography on. We threw out some bread and these guys came to us.

You do have to watch out for poo though - once my Mum got a load on her when she was throwing bread and my Dad was photographing the birds.

Deer mayhem

My family and I went on an outing to Tatton Park yesterday to see the Red Deer rutting. Sadly they weren't rutting, but I still got some great pictures of the males with their impressive antlers.

Not such impressive antlers - but they will be bigger next year when he has grown a bit more.


This stag was lying quite close to the path and roaring. We could hear the roar from a long distance away and the roar of another stag replying.

It is hot out!

We went out looking for fungi today. It is a great time of year to find it and after the heavy rains last week we had hoped to get lucky.

My dad made me put on a hoodie and coat as we left the house, but it turned out to be really hot. The temperature gauge in the car said it was 19 degrees centigrade.

We did spot fungi and my dad took lots of images, but we also came across a small bush with a few flowers left which some Red Admiral and Comma butterflies were making the most of.

You can see from the pictures that lots of the flowers are already dead and the butterflies will soon have nothing left to feed on.

Very early

For the last couple of days my Dad has been waking me up early (at sunrise) to go out with the cameras. I asked him to. It is hard getting up that early but there is no one around at that time and the light is very good for taking photographs.

We saw a few Hares, but mostly they were running in the distance or under cover. But this one let me take a few pictures before running away.


Then we saw this Kestrel. It was on the floor when we saw it but flew up into the trees and was looking down at the ground probably searchingfor breakfast. It flew down after a while and started to eat worms but it was hidden from us and I couldn't get any clear views.

This evening.

This morning was a bit disappointing but my Dad said we could go out this evening, so we did. Just before the sun went down the Hares started to come out and move about. It was great and we saw this little one, which my Dad reckons is probably only a few weeks old.


This one might be its Mum or Dad. It is nice to know that there a new Hares about and hopefully I can continue to photograph them for a long time to come.

Black & White Nature

This morning my Dad and I went out to a local site to see if we could get any photographs of Hares. However, there were none about and we only saw Magpies and Pied Wagtails.



I'm going to go out this evening again when it is a bit cooler to see if we can spot some Hares. If we do I'll try and post them here quickly.

Butterfly face!

I was recently on a trip to Scotland when we stopped the car because we saw some dark butterflies. When we got closer we realised that they were Scotch Argus:


The butterflies got used to us and were soon landing on us. I think they liked the salt in our sweat.


One even enjoyed landing on my face!