Focus on Drift Reservoir

Above is the view from a cover point that I sometimes use at Drift Reservoir and the images below were all taken during a three hour shoot there earlier today.


Nice to see a squirrel freely foraging about on the reservoirs open banks.

It is quite common to see fox out hunting on the shoreline and this one came very close until I fired my shutter after which it took off in a flash.

Many Grey Heron grace the banks of Drift Reservoir and reflections shots and take-off 's are there for the taking.

The resident Moorhen are always busy and they provide good reflection images from the many partially submerged tree stumps.

With plenty of small fish and dozens of tree stumps to work from Kingfishers are a common sight around Drift Reservoir.

Last but not least comes this fairly rare sighting of a nice Black Rabbit !

The Tehidy Tyrant

This male mute swan which I have named as the ' Tehidy Tyrant ' is part of a territorial pair on Tehidy's main pond,  The pair have a problem that as many as twenty to thirty other swans are attracted to this pond by the daily hand-out of food from park visitors so they keep on returning.

The male demonstrates almost constant daily aggression to the other swans singling them out one at a time to corner and attack and during my visit it chased one out of the pond and along the entire pond walkway into the woods where it stood an top of the other exhausted and shocked bird peaking relentlessly at its head, eyes and neck.

I have seen this sort of attack in other locations before and if not stopped it can result in the more submissive bird being killed or blinded so a little intervention was required to separate these birds.

Other subjects encountered included :

There were five resident Little Grebes present on Tehidy's big pond yesterday and they seemed to never stop fishing successfully for Three Spined Stickleback and its a wonder that the fish stocks manage to reproduce quickly enough to survive.

Moorhen were abundant both in and out of the water and a lone Jay was perched watching to see where the resident squirrels hid their peanuts with a view to raiding them later.

It would be difficult to ignore the cheeky Squirrels or the Xmas Robin at Tehidy both of which will quite happily take nuts directly from visitors and posing for photos comes as standard behaviour.

Millpool Wildlife

ON LAND

A chilled out fox cub relaxing in the middle of the lane access to the Millpool and below a fine young buck Roe Deer feeds on grasses as it works its way through local fields looking for female deer.

A resident male Pheasant patrolling his patch in the field adjacent to the pool,

ON AND IN THE WATER

A Water Lilly reflects nicely on the still surface water off the pool.

A two foot long 15 lb + wild common carp cruises between the wed beds with its dorsal fin projecting though the surface water.

An adult Moorhen finds a floating dog biscuit on the surface that has come off our hook when used as bait for Silver fish and Perch bait.

A Female Emperor Dragonfly lays her eggs on surface floating pond weed

AND IN THE AIR.

The male Emperor that the above female has just mated with lands to take a rare break from seeking out females and fighting off rival males,

A pair of mating Broad bodied Chasers hang in the air from a dried reed stem to complete their mating cycle.

A pair of Narrow -winged Damselflies hooked up and mating in the morning sunlight.

And finally a female Broad-winged Damselfly also known as a damoiselle takes a break on a fresh green Hazel leaf.

GONE FISHING !!

I decided to make today the start of my  'Summer Fishing Season ' where I put down my long lenses and try to revive a few rusty fishing skill around some of the back waters of west Cornwall during the high level of tourism.

Well with my fishing tackle all set up and ready to go the first thing that happened was that a cheeky Robin decided to befriend me or perhaps more to the point my lunch and bait boxes.

My camera was still in the boot of the car so I just had to take a few shots of this Cheeky Chappy before handing out to many tit bits.

As I settled down to start fishing along came a very friendly moorhen that was also looking for hand-outs,  It probably remembered the liberal amounts of dog biscuit bait that it consumed during last summers fishing season and was back looking for more so it just hung around the water margins making the occasional call until some were provided in exchange for a few portrait reflection images.

I eventually managed to cast my bait into the Millpond close to an off bank floating weed bed around which several dragonflies and damselflies were busy laying their eggs while also distracting my attention from the fishing.

Half an hour later with no time put into the fishing the real star of the wildlife show arrived by way of a fine female Kingfisher that I spent many hours working with during last year.

This bird still uses some of the same fishing perch points as last year and I was now hooked on trying to predict which one she would use when she caught a fish but this time I was without the benefit of a far closer working position.

I managed to get this a first of her three visits to fish on the correct perch point and it was nice to see the bird shake off the water from her dive before consuming the small fish.

With the fish being so small she opted for an immediate follow on dive but she went in the opposite direction with the second fish.

So how did the fishing go ??  lets just say that the kingfisher caught a few more fish than I did !!

Easter Bunny

'I dropped into Marazion Marsh early Am and one of the first subjects that came up in my viewfinder was the cute little Easter Bunny pictured above.

Other subjects included several pairs of Moorhen,  The resident Mute Swans have built this years nest in open view on one of the small islands.

Three Little Egret were all busy fishing along the warren water margins.

Several Pair s of Grey Heron were coming and going to tree nests along the railway line.

And as I left I disturbed an unseen Buzzard on the ground of the rabbit warren that resettled on one of the distant railway signal assemblies waiting for me to leave,