Bonapartes Gull

Another visit to Helston boating lake and the visiting Bonapartes Gull was still there. So I managed to grab some varied images of it today, some in good light some bad. Still a bit of variety.

Helston Boating Lake Visit.

With the continuing bad weather I decided to stay local today. A quick visit to the boating lake paid off; with a visiting Bonapartes Gull in good view and some of the more residents birds.

Coot

Cormorant

Canada Goose

Bonapartes Gull

Bonapartes Gull

Northern Shoveler

Northern Shoveler

Coot

Bit wet in not so sunny Cornwall

As the rest of the country basks in sunshine the Cornish cloud/rain/and mist magnet ids working at full capacity this week. Still despite the rubbish weather a couple of images from the residents at Stithians reservoir.

Little Grebe

Long Tailed Tit

Goldfinch

Stithians Southern Cut Off

As photography goes it was a poor day weather wise, but had a couple of things I wanted to try out, so spent a couple of hours in the hide at the Southern cut off. Nothing spectacular just the local residents. So here are some images, oh and a short video.

Goldfinch

Reed Bunting

Dunnock

Goldfinch

Chaffinch

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Predannack Airfield

Predannack Airfield opened it's gates for the first time in decades to the general public. I was one of a few people on an official tour put on by RNAS Culdrose, Predannacks parent station.

We visited a few areas including the following:

Barnes Wallis Ramp: used in the 1950's to test "Wild Goose" and "Swallow" variable geometry models

Then a look around some old airframes, this looked a bit like an aircraft graveyard of sorts, but all airframes are put to good use for crew rescue/crash training etc.

Air Traffic Control Tower, a quick tour of the tower and associated spaces.

Finally a crash/fire exercise from the Royal Navy school of Flight Deck Handling

(Apologies for the way the images are randomly added by the blogger programme)

Sea King MK5

Wessex MK3

Canberra Bomber rear crew space

Canberra Bomber

Dominee T1

Sea King MK6

Sepecat Jaguar

Sea Harrier FA2

RAF Harrier GR3

Jetstream T2

Predannack Air Traffic Control

Firefighters attack the flames from the exercise crash/fire

Fire-fighting

Fire Fighter

Royal Navy Fire Tender

Aircraft crash/fire exercise

Barnes Wallis test ramp

Fire Tender arrives at the fire exercise

Kennall Vale and Stithians

With rain in the forecast decided a walk around Kennall Vale was in order but decided to leave the camera in the van (mistake) Having decided to leave the camera in the van and just enjoy the walk, I found myself staring at a dipper by the bridge this later turned into two dippers. Luckily I was able to acquire a suitable camera from Alan James for a few seconds to get some shots. We waited an hour but they failed to re-appear.

Then it was onto Stithians Southern which was quite productive despite the often poor light.  Here are some of today's images:

Dipper

Long Tailed Tit

Goldfinch

Bullfinch

Bullfinch

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Aviation Front Cover

Great to see my work on the front cover of Flight International, special thanks to Newquay Coastguard for providing the opportunity. Image was taken on the North Cornwall coastline

Sun is out, Adders (Vipera berus) are out!

With Cornwall enjoying sunshine for most of the day I took a trip along the coast at Rinsey. Along the coastal path were 4/5 adders all soaking up the warmth the sun provided. A quick shower and the adders retreated only to return again once the sun did. With cloud cover less than forecast adder photographic opportunities  were good. So as not to disturb the adders I used a 500mm lens, depth of field is shallow but focus on the eye/head the images look acceptable. Think I managed to get images of four out of five that were sighted at various locations. Onto the images:

B/W with a splash of colour

Adder

Adder

Adder