At long last the weather had warmed up and Spring was well and truly on the way in fact for a few days it was more like Summer with temperatures soaring into the seventies!! Nature responded and migrants started arriving and spring flowers were blooming. I decided therefore to visit Bowland where I hadn’t been for some time to see if the birds that favor this beautiful part of Lancashire had returned to their breeding haunts on the high moors.
It was very nice to revisit some of my favorite parts of Bowland and good to see that the waders and grouse that breed up there had returned. Numbers were on the low side and I traveled many miles to capture some images for the blog. Lapwings did seem to be in good numbers and I enjoyed myself photographing at close range a male bird which was using a roadside rainwater pool to bathe and drink. A
pair of oystercatchers posed obligingly on the roadside walls overlooking their moorland breeding location. Grouse were not easy to find but perseverance paid off with a nice male posing for me in the afternoon sun. Curlews were a bit scarce and I only managed to get close enough to one bird for photographs as I returned home through Calder Vale.
Nice to get back to Bowland again and I hope to do a few early morning visits in due course.Hope you enjoy my selection from Bowland and I am looking forward to see more birds in the coming weeks. It has actually turned colder again as I write this blog and this will hold up the breeding process yet again.
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!!
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