This last week I made a couple of visits to Dallam Park near Milnthorpe. Dallam Park is home to a herd of fallow deer which have occupied this deer park probably for a few hundred years. The fallow deer can often be observed from a large layby adjoining the A6 just south of Milnthorpe. They […]
Author: Brian Rafferty
I am based in Preston. Lancashire. This central location enables me to travel easily to a wide variety of habitats in the North of England. I tend these days not to travel very far as I find that there is plenty to see not very far from home. On my own doorstep are a wonderful variety of habitats - natural woodlands, open fells and hill country, unspoilt river valleys and I have easy access to the delights of the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales National Parks. As you will see from my bird images much time is spent at the wonderful coastal sites forming part of Morecambe Bay and the Ribble Estuary e.g. Marshside and Leighton Moss. In recent years Digital Photography has taken over from Video and as time has moved on I have acquired more and more equipment - as you do!!
I use Nikon Camera Equipment and currently use a Nikon D200 for general work and a D300 specifically for bird photography. The D300m is usually coupled to a 500mm F4 lens which has dramatically changed the quality of images that I am now able to obtain.
I am enjoying being able to post images on Flickr and share the rewards of our wonderful interests with the rest of the world!!!
Sunderland Point
I recently had a couple of visits to Sunderland Point on the Lune Estuary. This is a remote and beautiful part of Lancashire and requires an amount of planning before any visit. It is a finger of land surrounded on one side by the estuary of the River Lune and on the other by part […]
Snipe and Others
I am posting some images from recent trips to Leighton Moss and into Bowland. My main objective was to photograph purple heron and red grouse. My efforts were shown in earlier postings. At Leighton Moss whilst waiting for the heron to show a trip down to the Eric Morecambe hide was good for snipe. Four […]
Grouse Shooting
Recently I made a couple of trips into Bowland looking for some opportunities to photograph Red Grouse in amongst the purple heather. It didn’t quite work out as there was much activity from grouse shooters with guns and dogs. The large estates in Bowland are very busy at this time of the year with shooting […]
A Purple Patch
A purple heron has been present at Leighton Moss for a couple of weeks or so and as I had never seen one I was keen to add some images to my portfolio. Mike and I arrived at the Grizedale Hide where the heron had been showing well. We did see it but all too […]
Lots of Knots
At the beginning of August I like to visit a favourite wader roost near to Southport. Around this time the waders are beginning to return from their Arctic breeding grounds. A couple of weeks ago there was a favourable tide and I was looking forward to a return to the coast hopefully to catch up […]
Osprey Farewell
It has been many weeks since I reported on the Lake District ospreys. The good news was that the pair of ospreys had been successful in rearing two chicks and I returned this week knowing that they had fledged. I wanted to see them before they left on their long migration to West Africa. I […]
Brilliant Bempton
It had been six years since I had last visited RSPB Bempton Cliffs on the East Coast of Yorkshire. I therefore decided a visit was long overdue. Mike and I arrived around midday after a three hour drive from Preston. It was to be a fine sunny day ideal for photographing the thousands of seabirds […]