Down by the River

So today, as the weather is looking glorious – which is unheard of on a bank holiday weekend, I have chosen to head down to the river by my house, on some private land that I have access to, to see what I can see and capture.

I have seen a few interesting animals here in the past, most notably a Kingfisher which I have seen flash past me at the bridge on about 3-4 occasions over the last 8 years and then about a month or so ago, I also saw a White Throated Dipper, so I know there are some interesting things here, if I see them today is a different story!

I decided to head up to the bridge first, with the idea that I work my way down and back over the morning. I headed out from home just before 8am, so it is still early in the day. My first spot, by the bridge, didn’t exactly turn out as I was hoping, there was not much in the way of places to conceal myself and still get a good view of things. I moved up, closer to the bridge, but everything was extremely back lit, so I decided to move on and head down river.

On my way down, I was looking for signs of burrows in the riverbanks and came across an area that I thought had potential. I had seen from the road that there was what looked to be like holes in the back, but upon arriving and waiting to see if there were any signs of life, there was nothing (well at least at this time). My thinking was that as we have had such a wet winter, the bank has been undercut and is eroding incredibly fast, so maybe that is off-putting to potential residents.

I continued down river and my route lead my through a couple of fields with the river fenced off, so I headed back. There was an area where I was able to cut down to the river so I went down to find myself a nice space to sit and wait for the wildlife to come to me (hopefully!). My chosen spot had a couple areas of interest in the form of the remains of a broken tree branch and a hole in another tree.

I set up and got comfortable, and then waited and waited some more. I did see a Wren, but due to the light and my f5.6 aperture lens, my shutter speed was too slow to capture it.

After waiting and watching some more, I noticed a squirrel off in the distance, slowly heading towards me. With my camera primed and animal eye AF active, I watched for where it might appear next. I was thinking it would be heading closer to me in the trees, however, it appeared, literally in front of me as the base of a tree and stopped in some glorious light long enough for me to get some amazing shots! I am so happy with how this image came out, and it is a new favourite of mine.

I then spent some more time, watching and waiting but nothing else arrived to grace my lens, so after about 45mins-1hr in total and with so new knowledge of the Aztecs, thanks to a podcast I was listening to (if you are interested in it, then the series is called ‘a short history of…’, its blooming amazing and I have learnt loads) I decided to start making my way back up river. I didn’t see much, except a hen pheasant that scared the crap out of me when it flew up mere meters away.

I ended up back at the river bank where I thought that there was nothing living and was proven totally wrong as there were in fact Sand Martins here! I set up shop on the back by a tree and tried my best to get some images of these speedy guys. It is fair to say, it was incredibly hard, and I manage to get 2 ‘passable’ images! I was hoping that they would be heading in and out of their burrows a bit more, but alas, that was not the case. I think that I will head back here more towards evening time, when they may be more active in the burrows.

Whilst I was attempting to photograph and film the Sand Martins, a couple of very cute Mandarin Duck appeared, they were not with me for long, but I did manage to get some video and a couple of images of them before they swam back upriver.

A Sandpiper also popped by for a very short time, but I was able to get a couple of really nice shots of that before it headed off again.

At this point, it was getting on towards 11 o’clock and I figured the Sand Martins would continue to be out, flying over the fields rather than around the burrows, so I headed upriver to see if there was anything else to see.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t so I headed home for breakfast instead. All in all, I had a lovely morning by the river, and it is somewhere I will be heading back to again and again this spring and summer as it is so close by.

I hope you enjoyed my images and will catch you next time.