A week in Woolacombe!

A couple of months ago I booked a week in Woolacombe, Devon with my family for an Easter break. I was expecting lovely weather to be honest, but it turned out that Winter didn't want to hand over the British environment to Spring just yet and the resulting weather was wet, cold and windy!
  Being a lover of wildlife photography, this wasn't great news! Even worse news was the fact my Nikkor 70-300mm lens started developing a fault that got progressively worse day by day! The motor inside seemed to be 'sticking', the lens made a horrible grating noise and the focus jumped all over the place, making taking pictures impossible! After a few seconds the noise and vibrating stopped and I could finally take the picture, but usually by this time the bird had long gone! I was truly fed up with this unexpected turn of events! I wonder if it can be fixed, or even if it is worth trying....might be cheaper to buy a new one! :-(
    Still, there were plenty of birds in the woods outside our chalet, including Ravens, Great Spotted Woodpeckers, Jays and Buzzards. Tawny Owls called out in the night.
  Down by the beach a few Wheatears were on the short grass by the dunes, as well as Meadow Pipits and Stonechats in the scrub.
  I still had a nice time walking and swimming all week, but, to be quite frank, I'm now knackered..... I could do with a holiday....

By the way, we stayed at Woolacombe Sands holiday park, a fabulous friendly place to stay, one I can highly recommend! Here's the link to their website;
http://www.woolacombe-sands.co.uk/


Below are some pictures I did manage to get!

^Above^ - Buzzard by our chalet!

^Above^ - Carrion Crow feasting on a dead Fish on the beach.

^Above^ - Male Stonechat

^Above^ - Dunnock near the chalet.

^Above^ - Magpie

^Above^ - A Chiffchaff, swallowing a fly it had caught by our chalet.

^Above^ - Jackdaw

^Above^ - Kestrel hunting on the Sand Dunes.

^Above^ - Wheatear

^Above^ - Daffodils at the Holiday camp confirmed it was actually Springtime!!

^Above^ - Song Thrushes are increasingly a rare sight in my home County of Somerset, but the Holiday    Park had plenty of them! Their song was a beautiful sound to wake up to in the mornings and just as lovely to listen to as the sun set in the evenings!

 ^Above^ - Gorgeous Gorse in bloom!

 ^Above^ - Another sign that it really was Spring was the presence of lots of bleating Lambs on the hillside beside the Holiday Park!

^Above^ - Woolacombe sunsets are stunning!!

^Above^ - The sunset view from our chalet! What could be better?!

^Above^ - Yours truly on the Holiday parks 'Woodland walk'. Picture taken by daughter Emily!

Sand Martins!

Considering British Summer time is officially with us this Sunday, the weather has been cold and atrocious in the UK for the last couple of weeks! It even tried snowing in Somerset today! Luckily we haven't had any of the severe snowfall and drifts that Northern England, Scotland and Ireland have suffered.
    One of the first Summer migrants to arrive on our shores is the Sand Martin, and bodies of water at this time of year is the best place to see them. I popped into Cheddar Reservoir and there were between 10 and 20 of these little birds hunting flies over the water and bordering grassy fields, they seemed oblivious to me and were flying low around my legs! I'd never been so close to Sand Martins in my life!
  Trying to photograph these incredibly fast and agile flyers was proving extremely difficult to say the least! Focusing on them is almost impossible when they are flying so low, there are too many background distractions that the camera focuses on instead, grass, fences, trees, walls! I persevered though and despite having a couple of hundred blurry attempts, I did manage a couple of pretty decent shots! That is the beauty of digital photography, you can just delete the poor pictures, no harm done! It's worth it to catch just one good shot!
  On the reservoir, quite close to the shore, was a Great Crested Grebe. It was diving regularly, so I lay on my stomach and waited for it to surface. Luckily it came up right in front of me, having caught a Fish! I managed to fire off a few shots, despite my discomfort!! :-)

Below are some of the pictures;

^Above^ - Sand Martins

^Above^ - Great Crested Grebe and catch!

^Above^ - Tufted Duck

Some more of my own favourite photos!

As the weather has been very cold and wet and miserable in Somerset recently I haven't had the chance to take any photos! It's predicted to stay pretty grim over the weekend too, so I thought I'd post some of my favourite shots from the past instead! Looking at them inspires me to try to take more, even better pictures in the future! I get so much pleasure from it! Hope you like the results too!