Creature Photos by Gentle Lemur: A Double Day

COOMBES VALLEY RSPB & BLACKBROOK ZOO

8th June 2013

I don’t often visit a nature reserve and a zoo on the same day, but these two places are both worth visiting and they are only a couple of miles apart in the Staffordshire moorlands south of Leek.

Coombes Valley is fairly steep-sided, with a stream at the bottom. The main habitat is oak woodland, with some meadow and pasture. It’s not one of the RSPB honeypot reserves with a shop and a restaurant and lots of hides. There is a car park and an information centre, usually unmanned, plus a drinks machine and toilets. But there are trails and seats in strategic places, all shown on the map in the nice information leaflet.

I had visited once before, so I knew that my opportunities for photography would be limited. Woodland in early summer is full of the sounds of birds, but it is hard to see any of them. I decided not to wander through the woods getting frustrated, but to sit on a seat beside the stream and wait to see what happened. I saw grey wagtails feeding 30 metres away where the stream disappeared round a bend and a pair of jays in a tree half way up the slope. Nothing was close enough to photograph. But it is always pleasant to sit in the sun on a nice day and my patience was rewarded when a pied flycatcher appeared in one of the oak trees in front of my seat.

The little male behaved just as the bird books say - fidgety, unpredictable, mostly in the branches of the oaks, but coming down to the ground occasionally. The bird came and went, often half-hidden in the leaves, rarely still for long. I knew my first photos of this tricky target were poor, but I gradually got rather better opportunities. I was hoping that the bird would eventually choose a perch on the outer part of the tree in the sun, because I was struggling with exposure.

Another photographer came out of the undergrowth and joined me, but the session was cut short when a warden arrived with a group of parents and children. She politely explained that they were going to start pond dipping (or stream dipping to be exact). We had to move on. In another 20 minutes I might have got a better shot of the flycatcher and possibly of a wagtail too. This is my best effort, but it's not really up to standard. I saw nothing of note on my way back to the car park.

Blackbrook Zoo is mainly a bird collection, concentrating on waterfowl, ibis and cranes. They have a few mammals too. The site is quite exposed and the zoo had problems in the bad winter this winter. Several aviaries have been demolished or are under repair and there are still problems with the Tropical House and the toilets – but there were plenty of decent portaloos on site.

On my previous visits I had just used my 300mm lens, but this time I used my 500mm, so I got some nice portraits. As it happened, several of my best shots were of ibises. Here are a glossy ibis bathing, a buff-necked ibis and the unusual hadada