Biddulph Grange

House Across the Pond
Originally uploaded by Let Me Show You What I See

Last week we visited Biddulph Grange which is a National Trust Garden in Staffordshire. The house is not open to the public but the gardens are beautifully laid out in different themed areas. Next to the gardens is the country park which has lots of walks through the trees and next to the stream. There is a large pond in the park with a variety of water fowl and fish. The Talbot pub just along the road has a wide ranging menu and the food is excellent quality. The weather wasn't brilliant but we had a wonderful day out. Follow the link on the photo to see the rest of my photos from the day.

Mother Coot and Last Baby

Mother Coot and Last Baby
Originally uploaded by Let Me Show You What I See

It's just over a week since I first found a pair of Coot with six chicks happily swimming around so I returned to see how they were progressing. Now there's only one chick and it is sticking very closely to it's mother. It looks a bit traumatised so I didn't hang around. Hopefully when I come back in a few more days it will still be here.

Tadpoles near West Bretton

A little while ago I bought a Kodak Playsport video camera which is able to take video and still images under water.  I have been taking some videos as I've wandered about but  I've been looking for an opportunity to use it under the water.  While I was walking around West Bretton and Midgley at the weekend I spotted some tadpoles in a fishing pond and thought this would be an ideal subject.

Can't see many in this picture with the light through the clouds reflecting on the water.

Her's a shallow area with some light coloured mud on the bottom which shows the tadpoles quite well.  Unfortunately the mud gets stirred up very quickly and makes the water very murky.

The area of water in the foreground is where the tadpoles are living.  Beyond the reeds the water is much deeper and this is were the anglers were fishing on my first visit.  These still photographs were also taken with the Kodak Playsport and to be honest the quality isn't too bad.

Here's a video of the tadpoles from my first visits to the pond.  The pond is on my way to work so I am going to drop in every now and then over the next few weeks to see how the tadpoles are getting on.

Coot and Chicks near Midgley

Adult Coot and Chicks 2
Originally uploaded by Let Me Show You What I See

While walking around Bretton and Midgley I spotted a footpath with a hand written note on it saying 'Pond'. I was intrigued so I followed the path which went through a small woods and then into a bit of a meadow where there was a pond with a fence around it. As I got closer I could see that there was and old duck house (nothing as grand as the one belonging to that MP) and nearby was a pair of Coots. As I got closer still I also spotted some little fluffy chicks, six in total. Ugly little things but I'm sure their mother loves them. It's quite exciting because this is the first chicks I've seen this year. Follow the link to my flickr account to see some of the other photos of the coots and chicks and also some more of my recent bird photos.

Bluebell Woods

Bluebells 3
Originally uploaded by Let Me Show You What I See

I've decided after all this time to join Flickr and start posting my photos there. I need to get more exposure to my work and hopefully get a bit more feedback from the other Flickr members. I made the mistake of putting Woopra onto my blog to find out how much traffic was visiting and found that no-one was coming here except me and Liza from work.  I might not get any more visitors but it's worth a try.

I'm experimenting with publishing my photos to Flickr directly from Aperture 3 and I need to make a few changes to how I do that. Firstly I need to name my photos before I publish them otherwise I have to rename all within Flickr. I need to experiment with my next set to see whether adding keywords in Aperture get carried through as tags in Flickr and also if I geo tag the photos in Aperture whether that information is passed through.

I'm also seeing how useful it is to create my blog posts within Flickr using just one of my photos and then linking back to Flickr. So let's try this link to the rest of the set.  Well I need to add the link from within blogger but it's OK I guess.