Yesterday, I went over to Kings Bromley in Staffordshire to get some sunflower hearts and Hedgehog food. It's a journey I make pretty-much on a monthly basis, and my route takes me past the entrance to Croxall Lakes nature reserve. Occasionally I call in and make a visit.
The reserve is managed by the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, and has been developed from old gravel workings at the confluence of the Tame and Trent rivers. The reserve really comes into its own in the winter months, and when I took a group from my local naturalists club here at the end of June, it was very quiet from a wildlife point of view.
Nevertheless, as Lindsay (my wife) wasn't going to be home for lunch, I thought that I'd enjoy a picnic here after collecting the bird food. Having finished the picnic, I took a wander, not expecting to see much in the way of birds, but hoping for some dragonflies. I saw little other than a Migrant Hawker dragonfly as I wandered down to the first hide, and there was little to be seen from the first hide, so I set off under the railway and across the fields to the second hide.
There was even less to see from the second hide, and I made up my mind that if nothing showed in fifteen minutes I'd wander back and set off home where there were plenty of chores awaiting me!
I won't say that I was bored - more contemplative - but I did start taking photos of the passing trains as there was not much else to point the camera at!
There was some interest when a hunting Kestrel started coming towards the hide, but I think it saw something off to its right and veered away, to the railway, approximately 250 metres away.
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| Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) (female) - Croxall Lakes |
The Kestrel disappeared and I set off back towards the car, trying (totally unsuccessfully!) to get photos of some Migrant Hawkers, and a Brown Hawker, that I encountered on the way.
Suddenly a Kestrel appeared above the railway which was running on an embankment, only 30 metres to my left. Sadly, I was still set up for dragonflies, but kept banging away taking photos for the fourteen seconds it was around.
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| Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) (female) - Croxall Lakes |
Now it's confession time! When I first looked at my somewhat under-exposed images on my camera and saw the bold longitudinal stripes on the dark underside, I thought I'd been mistaken in my first assessment, and that I'd been photographing a Hobby. In fact, I even told my pal John on the phone that I'd photographed a young Hobby! It's only when I came to work on the photos that I realised that I'd got a female Kestrel with very bold markings on the underside! I'm really disappointed!
After this, I did manage to find a settled Common Darter and got a few photos of that too. If you're looking at the second image on a high-resolution screen you should be able to see the individual elements in the eyes.
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| Common Darter (Sympetrum striolatum) (female) - Croxall Lakes |
So there we are! I'd got really excited and, on the way home, had planned to write this post, which would feature my best-ever photos of a Hobby, and all I end up with is a post which shows me up as a real chump!
Thank you for dropping by. I'm off to find a real Hobby - or perhaps a change of hobby!
