You 'slag' lol, only joking .... its Fairburn Ings!

I drove down the AI(M) recently to get my car seen to by my nephew and on passing the turn off for Ferrybridge within 20 minutes of setting off I realised that Fairburn Ings, a notable RSPB reserve, was closer to me than I'd previously thought so a couple of days ago I decided to pay said reserve a visit. 

Now it was a dullish day but rain was forecast for the next 3 or 4 so I thought I'd better make the most of things and since I'd done the vast majority of my Christmas shopping the day before I reckoned I deserved a treat.

Fairburn won't win any awards for being picturesque, situated just a few miles outside of Castleford and in the shadow of Ferrybridge power station, its the remains of an old Yorkshire coalfield. Big old slag heaps, although now now largely covered with vegetation, loom large wherever you look and the various water bodies (the result of subsidence of former coal-mine workings) have a distinctly gritty, industrial feel. The RSPB though have done a smashing job here though and with a breeding Avocets and regular rarities seen here, its one of the top reserves in the North of  England.






How's this for an industrial looking bird hide!

My lens, with a fixed aperture of 5.6, is not a great performer in poor light so just as well that Fairburn is one of those photography friendly reserves with plenty of hides and those screens with holes just big enough to poke a long lens through!

No Avocets this time of year of course but plenty of Goosanders around (I reckoned on about 30) and here's a pleasing shot of 3 males.

Lots of Grey Herons about too, always good to capture ...... they stalk around in the reeds

 









hang around in trees .....

 




















...... and have been known to catch the odd fish!

 Cormorants on the other hand are maybe not the most photogenic of creatures and I know the anglers around here and elsewhere hate them because they take fish by the bucket load. Fair do's I say and just as Peregrine Falcons have I'm sure learnt that the Weekends are great for hunting racing pigeons, maybe Cormorants seek out gangs of rubber clad men with rods & poles! There were about 10 perched high up on overhead power lines surveying the scene when I was there but this one taking a lunch break made for a better picture!

 

Around midday the cloud cover intensified rendering anything but close up shots a bit of a lottery. Shame really because after being a tad frustrated by skittish winter thrushes I was coming into to reasonably tame Redwings and Fielfares. I pulled off a few reasonable shots and given the light these haven't turned out too bad but I think a return visit on a bright day is definitely in the offing! The Redwing came out best I think because although I managed to capture the Fieldfare feeding on berries  there was an unseen twig in my near vision that's definitely taken some detail away from the bird's shoulder area .... (argh, why do we look too closely!)

Fieldfare

Redwing

Around the visitor centre at Fairburn there are as many bird feeders as I've seen anywhere. It costs me a tenner a week to keep my garden stocked with various bird seeds and fruit so it must cost the RSPB a small fortune! Money well spent? Yes definitely ... as well as ensuring small birds survive harsh weather snaps, bird feeding stations provide an instant hit for people young and old, capturing their attention and of course their donations!

Great for the odd photo opportunity too, although from a photogenic point of view, any bird captured actually on a feeding station does tend to look a bit 'naff', so I tend to look for 'landing' shots .... where a bird lands immediately before or after feeding. Here's a few examples from 30 minutes or so at one of the feeding stations at Fairburn with not a fat ball or a peanut sack in sight, why if I hadn't already told you these could have taken in some remote arboreal forest!

Goldfinch

Long Tailed Tit



Tree Sparrow



Reed Bunting

Looking at that last picture reminded me of the many Reed Buntings I saw over wintering France (many more than you get here ..... flocks into the hundreds!). No different race than you get here as far as I'm aware but here's a couple of Frenchies .... better light!! 

 

 

 

Lastly here's a pretty smart looking Black Headed Gull, not anywhere near the feeders but I have them occasionally in my garden picking up the scraps that all the other birds tend to leave ... pizza crusts usually! I have to say that I tend to have a bit of blind spot about gulls generally but having seen many fine pictures of gulls of all descriptions on various blogs recently (most of them better than this one!), I'm determined to give them more of a look. I'm not convinced they make pleasing subjects for the camera but my word there seem to be more rare / unusual gulls being seen these days ..... Caspian Gull? Never heard of them before this year!

Northern swan hunting in the floods of the Derwent Valley

 

A fine day yesterday and a perfect opportunity to procrastinate yet again over my Xmas shopping and pop out for a couple of hours to the Derwent Valley in search of Northern swans. I'd heard there were a few Berwick's Swans in the area, these days the scarcer of the 2 species that arrive in our country from the near Arctic circle.

I decided to head out from the Bubwith bridge end along the narrow strip of river bank still above the flood water simply because it looked so inviting .... almost surreal walking out there with the light  being so good.

With so much flood water about though the wildfowl in the valley are spread far and wide so I knew it would be a stroke of luck to get what I was after, a nice close 'fly past' of Berwick's Swans ..... and as far as that particular species was concerned I was not in luck. In fact this was more of a pleasant walk than a serious birding trip. Wigeon and Teal were the most numerous ducks with maybe 200 or so of each visible and there were 20 or so Pochard about but everything very distant. I did have 6 Redshank nr the bridge plus a flock of about 50 Golden Plover in the sky. A passing Buzzard looked good in the sunlight and the Barn Owl was once again daytime hunting near the Geoffrey Smith hide.

 

There were several small groups of distant swans about but too far off to identify without my scope but I did have one Whooper Swan that slid off the bank about 100 yds away. It moved away fairly sharpish and a bit far away for a decent shot but my first of the Winter and the highlight of my little trip across the floods.