Having spent the last few days glued to the PC, working, I felt in need of fresh air and, looking for a new site for photography, I went early to a site owned by Staffordshire Wildlife Trust. It is called Wolseley Centre and it the headquarters for Staffordshire Wildlife Trust. The Centre is set in 26 acres of former landscape gardens which was the ancestoral home of the Wolesley family. The site has three lakes, riverside and many other habitats.
This is an image from their website, showing a map of the site. I had a wander around, it is really quite a promising site for photography. I will definitely go back when I have more time. Part of the path runs alongside the river. There was an elderley couple there… the guy had a 300mm L series lens on a Canon1D mkIII. I got chatting to him and he was trying to photograph kingfishers, which apparantly were nesting along that stretch of river. I caught a glimpse of one, but the perch they were landing on was pretty far away. I walked all around the edge of the site…. lots of butterflies… skippers, commas, tortoishells, gatekeepers and lots of banded demoiselle damselflies. Also quite a few reed bunting singing. I knew that sedge warblers were around too. I heard this amazingly loud song… a real mixture of rasps and warbles and strange combinations of sounds. I got really close to the dense foliage from which it was coming. Hard as I tried, I could not spot the bird… it sounded so close. I presumed it was a sedge warbler and when I got home, I checked the call. Sure enough I was correct…. just wish I had seen it. Would have loved to film it singing. It’s song was simply amazing! I may return at the weekend.
Follow this link to hear the sedge warbler song. I was interested to read that it is a big mimic, because in the middle of the song, the bird I listened to did what sounded like a great tit call!
Here are a couple of shots I took… didn’t take many… was really just looking around. I didn’t really have enough time to do any more than that.
I also took a shot of a reed bunting but, with the sky very bright, the bird was underexposed. I started playing around with the image in photoshop and came up with this image, which I quite liked… quite an ‘arty’ feel to it.
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