A Few Days in the Wye Valley.

After a long period of quiet, on the wildlife photography front, I finally put something together from a recent trip the the Wye Valley. Up until then we had been busy with family commitments, including a day recording the activities of 4 Great Nieces and Nephews at an adventure park. Photographing a 3,4 and two 6 year olds on swings, zip wires, slides and walkways in the trees is very much like my main hobby with unpredictable subject matter moving randomly about and in the shade of trees, at least with wildlife you're not worried about photographing any that you're not related to. That produced hours of work sorting the successes from the many failures but the parents were more than happy the results.

The trip to the Wye Valley was quickly followed by my wife testing positive for Covid followed a couple days later by myself, a week later my wife has tested negative at last and so far we've suffered no worse than very heavy head cold like symptoms.

On the holiday we stayed in a cottage on a farm overlooking the Wye Valley.

Down steep hills was our nearest village Brockweir.

A walk along the river to Tintern. Lots of Chiffchaffs

Regular passing Buzzards

A Robin singing in the Ruins of Tintern Abbey.

Another day walking along the Wye, the river in many different guises during the day according to the tide.

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Another Buzzard.

A very tatty Raven.

This little Wren just kept still long enough in the poor light for a photo.

A view from the top of Symonds Yat.

Very distant view with Heron, Little Egret and Cormorants

If we hadn't seen the white dot we would never have spotted the other birds.

Coal Tit at the top of Symonds Yat.

I just missed this Cormorant swallow a fish, you can see the bulge in it's neck.

Another walk along the Wye and more Chiffchaffs.

Then a large gathering of House Martins in the rain.

I tried many times to get a bird skimming the water, but a combination fast birds moving unpredictably in poor light defeated me, this is the best I managed.

Then a beautiful still day and a walk up Sugar Loaf Mountain, the Welsh one which is 596 metres high.

One of very many Dung Beetles flying about and crash landing and collecting sheep droppings.

At the top there was no wind and the air was full of insects, bad for us, great for the birds.

Wheatear

Sitting quietly at the top some Meadow Pipits came quite close.

Then a passing Raven, it was only later I realised what it had in it's beak.

Back at the car a reasonably close fly past from a Red Kite.

Another day and a Grey Wagtail

And a very obliging young Robin.

Overall a great week away in lovely accommodation, unfortunately it was all fairly quiet on the bird front.

This wasn't the end though we still had two night at Slimbridge to visit the wetland centre, more of that another time.

Sorry I've not kept up with replying to other posts for a while.

Best Wishes,

Trevor