Learning to Fly

I got up super early on Saturday to visit Welney WWT reserve in Norfolk for a dawn walk to watch the swans wake up and take flight to find food in the surrounding fields. I arrived at the reserve at about 5.30am to find somebody had spent the night there in their camper van!

The wardens met us and briefed us and then we began our walk into the reserve. The water levels on the reserve were already dropping, which meant that the swans were roosting on the far side of the washes so they were quite a way away from the hides. 

Some of us with cameras got set up outside ready for sunrise and the swans flying over us against the pink clouds. Sadly the swans hadn't read the flight plans correctly and most took off and flew the opposite way. Some groups did fly over us, but it was still quite dark so I was having to crank up the ISO to get any pictures at all.

After most of the swans had flown off we then had our own private feeding session before the reserve opened. The ducks and swans seemed to know when it would be feeding time as for about 15 minutes beforehand they just all drifted over to the front of the main hide. After the feed, we had our own feed in the cafe, which comprised of a full english breakfast.

I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon on the reserve under quite grey overcast skies. I like this shot of an adult and juvenile Whooper Swan taking flight after the lunchtime feeding session.These swans over-winter in this country and then return to Iceland for the summer, which is where I saw some swans last summer. I wonder whether they had been to Welney?

I also captured a sequence of two Whooper swans doing a bit of a courtship dance, which seemed highly appropriate for Valentines Day.

The highlight of the day though was on the drive from my hotel to the reserve where I saw no less than 5 Barn Owls sat on the road side fence posts in the space of about a mile. They looked magical in the headlights, especially when two took the air. My first experience of seeing owls in the wild.