Showing posts with label Lea Valley Park. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lea Valley Park. Show all posts

Thursday, 12 March 2015

GOOSANDERS IN LEA VALLEY PARK

This is a partial post until all four videos are up...which will be added to this post...just for those that may be Goosander fanatics, lol.

Well I managed to get up to my ususal haunts, thought not in 2014 they were not, in Lea Valley Park north of Waltham Abbey in Essex. Now I have achieved this and being so early in the Spring it means that I will be out a lot more than I was last year! WOOHOO!

I also have a new and improved tool to do this called a mountian bike, lol. A cboardman mountain bike with working gears and is a lot lighter to ride and due to an increased wheel size from the old 26 inch to 29 inch a great deal easier and more comfortable to ride.

No one is more surprised to discover that last detail out than I and I hated the idea of 29 inch wheels on mountain bikes. Due to weight and reduction in agility. Anyhoo...

Here are a couple of videos ...



Late additions will appear below ..

Sunday, 25 August 2013

DECIMATION OF WILDLIFE BY TAXPAYERS

I spent a good hour this morning wondering whether or not to cycle to one of my favourite spots for wildlife photography?! Fishers Green.

The Met Office had previously stated, well up until the point when the weather did not match what their app was telling me for the umpteenth time this year, that it was going to be sunny and partly cloudy from around 10 to 11 in the morning on-wards.

Only when I got ready and left the house the floor was soaking wet, the garden soil was sodden and there were dark clouds everywhere.

I changed my my mind several times before venturing up to my spot which is an 8 mile ride...

...ONLY I NEED NOT HAVE BOTHERED!

When I got there I could not believe what I was seeing and walked about rubbing my eyes in disbelief. The site for Orchids, though introduced and the site artificial despite them saying it is natural, the Orb SPider, the four spcies of Blue Butterflies, the other species of butterflies and all the thousands of Damselflies and Dragonflies had all been KILLED!!!

By a bunch of IDIOTS that YOU PAY millions to, TO DO!!!

Here are a bunch of pictures I sent my brother who was absolutely stunned at what they had done and I doubt that right now, 7 hours after sending him the pictures, he is STILL not over it?!

...

YES THIS REALLY IS THE SAME SITE THAT ALL THE RECENT PICTURES OF...

BROWN ARGOS, CHALK HILL BLUES, COMMON BLUES, HOLLY BLUES, SPECKLED WOODS, WILD PRIMROSE (and INTRODUCED PRIMSROSES), WASP SPIDER, RUDDY DARTER DRAGONFLY, COMMON DARTER DRAGONFLIES, SOUTHERN HAWKER DRAGONFLIES a great many others including Orchids.

Yes these pictures really ARE the same place!!









Wednesday, 5 June 2013

ORCHID MEADOW SURPRISE CONUNDRUM

This is the fifth.....thinking... and last of the Orchid sites I located in the Lea Valley. There is supposed to be a seventh but I have been all around it and there definitely is nothing there, despite some curious work being performed.

This is the third year I have visited this site and rather surprisingly for the first time in three years I spot a far off large patch of purple?!

Madness!

Anyway it is good to finally see something despite my suspicions but what I had hoped to see here and have not to date is the Common Twayblade Orchid!

Those in the fist picture are Southern Marsh Orchids, Dactylorhiza praetermissa, at a educated guess but as they were over 100 yards from me I had to judge by the shade of purple and their size. At the other site the Early Marsh Orchids are smaller and have more red in the flowers.

I hope to see the Common Twayblade this year but I doubt it and I never venture up here without visiting all the sites, except the Not English Primrose Just Panted So We Can Get 100 Million from Public To Badly Manage the Entire Park, Kill Masses of rare Caterpillars and Put Pressure on the Crested Newt Colonies and Leave Rubbish Lying Around While e Do Something Visual For Our Money and Cut Down Far Too Many Trees Hindering the Birds Nesting While Just Bringing Something To The Parks Orchids Sites To Help Them Like Ash We Will Just Continue To DO Things That Are Highly Visual SO It Looks Like We Know What We Are Doing But Really Just Fecking It Up SITES.

LMAO no I do not go to those now, lol.

This first one is on a 40x ZOOM, yes that IS FORTY TIMES ZOOM, lol.

I use an Olympus Stylus SP-80UZ Camera. As the Nikon I bought turned out to be faulty and refurbished and Nikon seemed to know too, lol.




COMMON SPOTTED ORCHID - DACTYLORHIZA FUCHSII

The names common and early should be BANNED from naming any life at all, I hate the term, lol.

Still here are the Common Spotted Orchids taken yesterday and even after posting several things last night and several things already today across several blogs, phew, I finally post them!!

AND TOMORROW I get to go out and do it all AGAIN?!?!

Hehehahaheheheheahaa (mad laugh!)

Still I DO enjoy it.

Sadly I fear for this Orchid site as like the others I have watched the numbers dwindle each year for 6 years due to overtaken by other plants while bushes and trees have slowly blocked out the light.

This year for the first time ever a shed load of trees and bushes have been felled and there are curious pot holes all over this meadow?!

Other Orchid enthusiasts have commented to me about this too. As well as being highly suspicious of how it is all run (hmm managed would be the wrong word), and that is from the top to the bottom, lol.







Sunday, 19 May 2013

COMMON SPOTTED ORCHID - DACTYLORHIZA FUCHSII

I do not normally expect to see these in flower until end of My to early June anyway but as the Marsh Orchids have not yet flowered I wonder if they will flower together?!

Oddly enough and further to my previous postings about Lea Valley Park Authority I had a chat with someone the day I took these photos.

He was an Orchid enthusiast and as usual we recognised that in each other and he told me that he had been told by the park authority that the site were...'SLOWLY DYING'?!

But then I have been witnessing this for years anyway.

More about this in my next post...THE ORCHID CONUNDRUM.








Saturday, 18 May 2013

SOUTHERN MARSH ORCHID - DACTYLORHIZA PRAETERMISSA

May 17th 2013 and the Southern Marsh Orchids placed here artificially but they state are natural have not even flowered...STILL?!?!

This is by far the longest they have taken to emerge in 6 years of visiting this particular site.

Hoping they all make a show?!

Oddly another site I have been visiting for two years I have YET to see one single Orchid?!

I did put up some pictures recently of what I THOUGHT were Orchids MAGICALLY appearing on the site I refer to but have to confess I think I misidentified young Bluebells as young Marsh Orchids?!

Too desperate to see ... SOMETHING?!

Conundrum post and Common Spotted Orchids coming in next 24 hours.

LMAO.



BEE ORCHIDS - OPHRYS APIFERA

Well this is s surprise?!

Due to an unexpected burst of appearing Orchids and albeit late in the year it appears that not only will I get my first photographs of Bee Orchids in flower, after trying for three years or more, but there will be quite a show too?!

I say surprise as I did a post about this exact location not very long ago and may have even posted pictures of these exact spots.

Now I have noted something about this location for a third time and I am still trying to convince myself there is nothing in it but I know there is.

Do you know what that means?!

Another 'Conundrum' post is coming and these have been popping up throughout my different blogs and everything suspicious to me will now and henceforth be known as the Conundrum Series.

Did not put all the pictures up and very few would be pictured twice, if at all except for wide shots ... err if I used them.





















Wednesday, 6 March 2013

LONG TAILED TIT FEEDING & VIDEO

While first waiting for the Bearded Reedlings and then moving over as a Reed Bunting had darted over and dropped deep into reeds a Long Tailed Tit, there are many of them up there, actually fed which is about the only time they stop for two minutes?!




VIDEO...



WIGEON & VIDEOS

Failed to spot this group of Wigeon were there and only while using up time waiting for light to start to fade that I realised they were about!



VIDEOS..






SHOVELLER DUCK & VIDEO

Started jaunt around a lake to do one circuit back to Reed Buntings and the Bearded Reedlings, this was last before I sat in wait before the Buntings appeared.






VIDEO