Twitching at Fowlmere

We went to Fowlmere Reserve just 10 minutes drive from where we live. It's a peaceful place with wide expanses of reed and lakes that attract lots of birds. Needless to say, I went armed with my bins and bird book, and was on the look out for megaticks to add to my life list. Did you know they call us birders "twitchers"? That's because when we see an exciting new bird, we tend to twitch so much we can harldy hold our binoculars. Birding is fast becoming a hot pursuit in the UK and is even starting to lose it's dowdy perception as little old ladies in tweed jackets peering at lesser spotted thingameebobs.

Hornet´s Nest

One of the birding hides had been taken over by a hornets nest. What a beautiful structure. Hornets eat wood and then regurgitate it to create a sculptured palace of warrens as thin as paper. Each warren contains a little grub that will later become a hornet. We were fascinated. This photo was taken behind the safety of a glass window.

A megatick



I was most excited (almost twitched in fact!) to see this lovely lesser spotted pink fairy wren. She was perched by tree, so close i didn't even need binoculars. A gorgeous speciment to be sure...

The thirsty bee

We decided to give the "macro" on my little camera a try and were very impressed with the results. When I was hunched over taking this shot, Ally suddenly started an emergency bout of murmuring and I looked up to see a bee perched on her lip, sipping at the juice from the apple she had just eaten. I managed to flick it away but it wasn't a happy bee. Ah, the dangers of an English country walk!

Red berries

Another challenge for our macro lens. Lovely red berries that looked like cranberries, but we're not sure. Looks a bit like a Xmas card.