Moors, Woods and Wildlife
Another hotchpotch selection from walks over the past few weeks. The weather has presented a bit of a roller coaster ride just recently, alternating between too hot, heavy rain, just plain miserable and, on rare occasions, just right.
While it was going through its "too hot" phase, I took an early morning walk to Great Hill to try and beat the heat. Setting off around 7:30, I was far too late to catch the sunrise and things were already getting a little toasty by the time I'd reached the open moors, so I kept to the Black Brook river valley to try and keep cool, then remained in the shade as I worked my way through the small woods that surrounds the river as it approaches Great Hill, before finally breaking cover for the relatively short section of open moor between the woods and Great Hill itself. To try to keep things light, I took just the little X-T50 and the Fuji 16-55 f/2.8 lens. Despite shooting a large number of photos, the only one that seemed to be worth sharing is this shot of the Jubilee Tower on Darwen Moor, taken from the summit of Great Hill, a nice counterpoint to the images I took when I visited the tower a few weeks earlier. The rest of the set were all very contrasty and bland due to the harsh sunlight, but I think the dubious sharpness of this lens at f/2.8 has helped to give this image a somewhat softer feel.
In another attempt to beat the heat, I took another early morning walk a couple of days later. This was a less ambitious walk to Healey Nab, but as I was hoping to encounter some wildlife< I burdened myself with my much heavier Nikon kit, namely the Z8 with the 100-400 f/4.0-5.6S lens and the Z7 with the collapsible 24-70 f/4.0S lens. Once more, I ended up with a lot of contrasty images under the harsh sunlight, but I did get at least one nice shot while cutting through the woods...
...and as a bit of a reward for carrying the heavy 100-400 lens, I did cross paths on a couple of occasions with a lone Roe Buck as we both tentatively made our way through the dense woodland at the southern end of the hill...
Later that same week, things had cooled just enough to venture out onto the moors in the afternoon, so I took a walk up Lead Mines Clough, a steep wooded valley that is home to Limestone Brook as it leaves Anglezarke Moor. I was concerned about just how hot it would be, so once again, working my way through the shade of a wooded glade seemed like a good idea. On this occasion, I wasn't expecting to encounter much in the way of wildlife, so I took the Z8 + 24-70 f/2.8S, probably the best lens I own and, unlike my copy of the Fuji 16-55 f/2.8, one that's actually sharp at f/2.8. I also brought the little Nikon 70-180 f/2.8 for a bit more reach, something that turned out to be a very good move, but for the following shots taken in Lead Mines Clough, I used the 24-70...
Upon reaching the top of Lead Mines Clough where it meets the open moor, I had a choice of either looping back, or continuing across Anglezarke Moor to Round Loaf. I wasn't feeling too exhausted with the steep ascent through the woods and the temperature seemed to have dropped a little bit, so I decided to carry on across the moors, given that there wasn't much ascent remaining between where I now was and where I was heading.
As I made my way across the moors I heard a distinctive cry from the sky. The source of this turned out to be a pair of Curlew that were circling the moors in a very vocal manner. At this point, I regretted not bringing the 100-400, although my back told me not to be stupid, so I quickly swapped to the 70-180, switched the Z8 into my bird specific custom setting and started shooting. Fortunately, despite the 70-180 being a bit on the short side for bird photography, an adult Curlew is a very large bird, with a wingspan up to 1m across, so I managed to get some half decent shots of them as they repeatedly circled the moors and buzzed my location. I was unsure if they were trying to chase me out of their territory as they did get quite close on a few occasions, which can be unnerving with such a large bird, but they never directly attacked me and left me alone as I moved on to Round Loaf...
That's one heck of a beak.
The 100-400 would have been nice for these, but I really wouldn't have enjoyed lugging it up to and across the moors on such a hot day (although this is something I've done in the past).
Finally, to round the week off, I joined a friend on her morning walk through Brinscall Woods at the weekend. This was a pleasant walk in nice conditions and I suspect this was close to the optimal time (around 10AM) for light in these woods at this time of year. The woods sit on the western flank of the hillside leading up to Heapey Moor, so the sun would have just about got high enough for nice side light from the East. Once again, I'd wheeled out the Z8 and 24-70 f/2.8S.
