Tuesday 30 October 2018

Cotswolds - 24th-28th October

After a few days in Cornwall and the excitement of the Grey Catbird, Sarah, Tobias and I headed to our cottage in the Cotswolds for a few days to relax and catch-up with work. I didn't plan to go birding as such and with a dramatic fall in nighttime temperatures there was not a lot of moth'ing to be done.

With the cold and clear nights I experimented with some star trail photography following the tips provided on this website. I was fairly pleased with my first effort but it was difficult to frame the image I wanted exactly, I would have preferred the North Star to have been in the frame and further to the left.

I ran the moth trap for two nights and caught little, the highlights being a Feathered Thorn, December Moth and Green-brindled Crescent but temperatures were around 6c so I didn't expect much.

I spent a couple of hours at Slimbridge on 26th, there was not a massive amount to be seen. There were good numbers of Shoveler, Pintail and Teal, mainly in eclipse plumage and looking far from spectacular. From the Zeiss hide there were two Peregrine, Marsh Harrier, c.150 Golden Plover, 200 Lapwing and five Common Crane. I saw little else of note and the place was heaving with people enjoying their half-term breaks. I headed home and met Sarah for lunch in Cheltenham.

Star-trail from Cowley, taken using Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark ii on Live Composite mode at 45mm F8, 800 ISO with a three hour exposure and images taken every 25 seconds.

Feathered Thorn - Cowley, Cheltenham

December Moth - Cowley, Cheltenham

Shoveler - Slimbridge WWT

Lapwing and Golden Plover - Slimbridge WWT

Moulting Pintail - Slimbridge WWT