RSPB Middleton Lakes 19 May 2019

The day started nice and sunny, showing signs it would stay that way, and I had been seeing reports of avocet young at various reserves, but not Middleton. So, armed with camera, I set out to see if the avocets had any young yet, along with whatever else I would see.

Unfortunately no avocet young, and while the reserve was generally quiet, there was more than enough for anyone keen enough to seek out.

I was going to upload them to Flickr today, but it seems Flickr is down for major maintenance but they'll be up soon enough.

So here goes.

A coot chick, not cute, in my personal opinion, probably the true ugly duckling...

Little Ringed Plover

Common Sandpiper

Common Blue Damselfly

Gadwall duckling, that was following adult gadwall ducks, which helped, or certainly gave a good indication of being gadwall

Oyster Catcher

Redshank

A pair of Avocets

Banded Damselfly

Mute swan incubating. I did watch it for a good while, just in case any cygnet activity was to be observed, but when the swan arose from the nest and sorted the immediate nest material around, nothing was observed.

Quite a lucky shot, I was about to pack the camera away when the heron flew right over.

At the end of the day, one of the volunteers at the reserve pointed out the cuckoo that everyone could here, and I managed to get a half decent photo.

Did I say a quiet day?

Well, possibly it was, but there's always something to see, you just need to keep your eyes and ears open. Wink

  • PimperneBloke said:

    Thanks Nigel, i'll definitely give it a go. I take it I still have to make my source pictures smaller, as on the pc they are anything from 4-7mb, but the post limit is 5mb?

    The main reason why I reduce the file size on many of my photos is because they often are stored on my mobile devices for quick and easy viewing, and for the screen size, the smaller image size is negligible to view, though it does conserve storage space and also reduce upload demands when I share on Twitter. So the file reduction is purely a personal thing.

    But I keep all images full size on an external hard drive to save space on the main computer and for ease of viewing when I upgrade my computers due to various Windows changes.

    However, it also saves upload time when posting here, and in view of a comment I'd seen on another thread elsewhere sometime ago, it helps with server storage space for the forum.

    I think the preferred method of photo sharing would be from a webpage or social media, which is why the default is 'Web (URL)' rather than 'Browse'

    It shouldn't make any difference whatever the original file size was/is.

    It's unlikely to make any difference to the upload time either. The following two photos are exactly the same, except the first was set to 1024 x 683 and the second was left at the original size 6000 x 4000, which is more or less the file size of your quoted 4.7MB, which suggests your camera images are set around 24 Mpxl.

    What may be noticeable, is when you read this posting, if you click on each image, the size you will view at may be proportionately different.

    However, the option for leaving the boxes blank doesn't work for me, the images are at the preset size irrespective. It may be a browser thing, it may be something else, I've not really investigated.

  • Hi Mike, thanks for the further clarification. The method you suggested worked absolutely fine in the sunsets thread, and I tried Nigel's suggestion in the babies thread and that came out fine too, and both preferable to my previous "thumbnail" size SmileyThumbsup

  • PimperneBloke said:

    Hi Mike, thanks for the further clarification. The method you suggested worked absolutely fine in the sunsets thread, and I tried Nigel's suggestion in the babies thread and that came out fine too, and both preferable to my previous "thumbnail" size 

    You're welcome.

    I know of others who find leaving the box blank works, hence why I say it might be a browser thing or something else.

    The important things are, it works and you're comfortable with it. Thumbsup

    Now time for me to get ready to capture some more landscape and wildlife photos.

    Keep clicking away and keep posting.