#30DaysWild River Walk

Today I set of with my mum for a river walk. I made a BTO bird track list of all the birds we saw. We also decided we'd walk down for some fresh air and to do a 30DaysWild blog.

Me and my mum began are journey down the bumpy track and unsurprisingly the first bird we saw was a Jackdaw. But then we arrived at the riverside looking out for birds especially a Kingfisher, but  instead we saw these two curious birds and thought they were just Mallards, but then I double checked (as I always do) that they were but no, they weren't, they were infact Wood Ducks. The funny thing was we were running all over the place because we were excited and at the time we didn't know what they were. We found out what they were because we asked the expert, Findlay Wilde my brother when I got home #WildeAboutBirds. Me and my mum were very wilde at the time when we saw them, unlike Findlay when we told him. They must have escaped from somewhere. 

    

When we moved on from being excited I thought it would be quite clever to get a photo of all the flowers,well some of the flowers, in this forest mixed in with the Cow Parsley and the grass. In the background of this photo you might be able to see a tree in the top-right-hand corner.  In that tree there was a Great Tit singing it's heart out, but the bad thing was there were too many people around so I couldn't get to sing my heart out unlike the Great Tit (he was lucky). 

I was quite lucky to get this shot because there were so many people walking past and there was the wind that was making my camera shake out of focus. There was also my camera lens which is a 100-300 zoom so I almost fell in the river stepping back to get this nature shot. All these problems were getting me a bit angry because I couldn't get a simple photo along the leveled out grass, Cow-Parsley and flowers.

It took me some doing to get this picture as you can probably tell.

Eventually once I took the other photo, we both strolled on a bit further and came across these two Magpies below.

Even though these birds are very common is the UK I find that it's still nice to get a photo of them where as some other birders might say "Oh look at the Magpie let's move on".  I would be the opposite and stay to watch the Magpies fight, feed or even play. No matter what I still enjoy watching them

I think this picture is really nice and I mean really nice because I've managed to get all exquisite yellow Irises, nettles and trees. I find this picture quite funny because one of the Magpies has disappeared behind the tree. Also the colours on the Magpie look alright from this distance but when you get closer you will really start to like them. Some people think that Magpies are not that nice because they steal other bird's eggs and mob raptors like Buzzards. I do agree that they steal other birds eggs, but they have got their own families to feed. Please leave a comment to say what you feel about Magpies. 

      

We had walked quite a long way by now and we were between the river and this massive lake. We had found a small gap in the reeds so we both had a look in the lake and even though it was quite windy it was very sunny so we could see right though the water.

We had a look at the rocks to see if any Dragonfly larvae were there but sadly not. Instead we saw a small Tadpole and we both went "Oh" and then all of a sudden out came a fish weaving its way out from the rocks and we went CRAZY!

I think this is so funny, whereas you might think I'm just being silly. To me this look like a grilled fish because of its black stripes across his body. Also I think I'm really lucky to get a great picture of this fish because it was moving so fast and if I didn't have my camera at the ready I would of missed that fish. Let's just hope a hungry Heron doesn't eat him or the fisher man catch him.  Thank you to Jack Perks for IDing this fish for me, it's a Perch.

    

For the picture below I was mega lucky because the geese came very close, and with the lens I had, it was alot harder to take the picture. I only managed to get one gosling and one adult. There were about 10 different families in the same place and this was one of them.

What I like about this picture is that the water looks so choppy and that the Canada Geese have still manged to stay looking calm on the water.

The different colors on the adult I find is really beautiful. The way the head is black and white and then the long black neck goes into more bright white, and finally the distinctive brown. If you look closley you can see on the young its feet kicking the water as hard as it can and I find that quite cute.
    

For this next picture, all we were doing is walking and there was a Cormorant on a wooden log floating on the water. My camera was turned off, but all of a sudden it flew and my mum suddenly told me to turn my camera on. I had to get my camera up straight away and it went straight in the view finder, then I focused and SNAP! I took the photo and when I got back this is the first photo I cropped because I liked it so much.

What I like about this picture is mainly the shape of it's wings. I also like the way the sun was shining off the underneath of it's wings against the bluish grey sky.

    

I think Coots are lovely birds, but looking at this one with the red eye, it sort of looks like they're on the dark side (but of course there still lovely birds).

If you see a Coot chick you will see that they have bright red heads and yellow fluff around their head. It's quite funny but the young look so much like little vultures. The colors of the Coot is a nice black with a white with a sort of evil red eye.

Me and my mum saw this Coot feeding it's young all little bits of pong weed and probably some water bugs as well I guess. 

The water on where the Coot is swimming is so clear you can see right though the water and on to the lakes bed. It may not look it on the picture but seeing it with your own eyes it's clear. Trust me.

      

The next picture I took was of a Carrion Crow feeding a young Carrion Crow. You can just make them out at the top of the picture below.  

I think this photo is really funny because on the photo it has a sigh at the bottom saying "No Unauthorised Access" but the Carrion Crows have been not obeying the rules of the river.

You probably can't see this but when I was editing the photo I zoomed in and saw that the youngsters mouth was wide open, but I didn't show you readers that because I wanted to make the picture funny be putting the sign in the photo.

This is were the river locks are if you are wondering what the brick walls are doing there.
  

Me and my mum were sitting on this warmed up bench while watching everything around us and then out came an unexpected Grey Heron and landed on this mossy floating log.  We both stood up and were waiting for it to fly so we'd get a photo of it taking off. It took off and I failed #Missed, but then my mum said "While it's flying, try again!" So of course I did and I ended up getting a better shot then I thought. It turned out to be alright.

What I like about this photo is the setting, because it's got the background which is the river Weaver and then most importantly the amazing Heron. In this photo the Heron looks quite old adult but infact he is actually a young Heron.  We could tell by how young and gangly it was when it landed.

I also was a bit unfortunate because as soon as I took this there was a fish that jumped out high from the river and that was really really really annoying.

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I think this pictures brilliant because you never ever get a photo or even see a Carrion Crow fishing with a Heron AMAZING!.

What happened was, we were both taking pictures of a Heron that was flying in and then he stumbled his way on to the river bank and started to have a look around. He got closer to the edge and looked over the water as you can see in this photo, and then a Carrion Crow came on to the grass very close to me and my mum.  The crow then started to move on a bit closer to the Heron and at the same time, we both said  "If that Crow goes right next to the Heron we are so lucky. And guess what, it did and we were both laughing our heads of it.

I also like the track that blends in very well with the grass and suddenly dips down in to the river.

By the way can any one spot the bottle bird. I'll give you a clue it's on the right-hand-side. Leave a comment if you see it.
    

This is the same Heron that's in all the other photo's on this post because this Heron just wouldn't leave us both alone, which was really quite strange. It was like having a pet Heron. That would of been good because we could of studied it for a while. #BestBuddys.

This Heron is very young and we could definitely tell because it was so clumsy. On this picture, I like the way he is standing on the log, strong and tall.  Also I like the way the background's set out with the half of the pipe, the water (which was very choppy) and of cause some of the reeds in the background.  I find that one half of the water is very bright and the other half is a lot darker.

I think this Heron's a bit lost because he didn't seem to know what he was doing.
    

I haven't seen one of these this year so I was very happy to see my first Damselfly, but it's a shame it wasn't a Dragonfly because I think they are even more stunning.  We were coming back from a day out walking and then this insect flew in front of us and we were amazed.  It landed on this long bendy reed and sat right in the middle of it luckily.

I like the way on this picture is the background is blurry and then the rest is in focus.
   

I hope you have enjoyed his blog. It was just one day out of the 30 Days Wild the Wildlife Trust are doing. It's not too late to join in.

Wild Bird Wednesday