Tag: Slimbridge Wetland Centre

Feeding time for the birds

I think the heron in the header photo has pretty much got breakfast sorted, don’t you? Some of our landlord’s goldfish are living their last moments.

Meanwhile, over at our local nature reserve, this egret’s just found something.

Another nature reserve: Slimbridge. Flamingos and a godwit look for their next snack.

And even if this sparrow hasn’t found any crumbs yet, she knows that a café is quite the place to look.

For Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #15: Birds feeding and drinking

And I’ll pop the hungry heron into IJ Khanewala’s Bird of the Week Challenge XIV too.

Birdy-long-legs

This week, Denzil, for his Nature Photo Challenge #9, invites us to hunt down long-legged birds.

So I’m going to book-end my post with herons, omnipresent herons, seen in every continent but Antarctica, almost anywhere where there is fresh water. I could have shown you one of our local birds, patiently fishing in the River Ure. Instead, I feature one seen in urban Busan, South Korea, and finish with one surveying the evening scene from his look-out post in l’Albufera, Valencia, Spain.

Let’s stay in Spain, and showcase a stork supervising the nest a-top a church in Tudela, Navarre.

Now Greece, and another member of the heron family, the egret, hunting for breakfast.

Let’s return to England. But you’ll only find flamingos in places like Slimbridge Wetland Centre.

Just as Lockdown came to an end, we ventured once more into the Yorkshire Dales, and found curlews, so newly unaccustomed to traffic that as we parked ready to go on our walk, they stayed nearby, unconcerned.

The patterned curlew blends in so well with the less-than patterned grasses. Especially the legs. Keep looking – you’ll find them.

I bet you wouldn’t expect to find a hen in this post. But our neighbour’s chickens have long legs. And they lay the smallest hens’ eggs ever.

And finally, as promised, here’s our Spanish heron.

L’Albufera, Valencia

Pretty in Pink

For this week’s Nature Photo Challenge, Denzil demands that we cheer ourselves and our readers up by serving up some Pictures in Pink.

I’m going for the obvious here. Flamingos, flowers – and firmament (or sky, as it’s more prosaically known).

Flowers first …

Finally, firmament:

Click on any image to see it at larger-than-postage-stamp size.

Nature Photo Challenge #3