My love of the Dipper started as a small boy, I’d catch two buses from my home with my bag packed with cold toast and a flask to get to Lathkill Dale, in the Peak District. Once I got there I’d sit and watch these incredible birds play out their lives before me.
It often takes something to have happened to us before we have a different mindset or want to change. As we start to ease the restraints of lockdown that we have been part of now for several months. Many people have become more aware of the normal things around us that most have never noticed, let alone stopped to enjoy.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been photographing a family of Pied Flycatchers and Redstarts. Both species arrive in April from Africa to raise their young here before the long joinery back to Africa.
Redstarts and Pied Flycatchers are two of my favourite summer visitors to our shores. When these birds arrive I know our summer is just round the corner. They travel all the way from North Africa to raise their family in a beautiful part of the Peak District, before heading back to Africa.
The Pied Flycatchers are back from Africa, as the British countryside is bursting with life and beauty now.
New Year brings increased snaring in the Peak District National Park. Snares are cruel, inhumane and indiscriminate and most European countries have banned them. Please be vigilant on the moors and report all snares urgently. Walkers and pets are at risk as well as wildlife.
If you’re out in the Peak District National Park and come across any snares, traps or see any suspicious activity from gamekeepers take photos, mark the location, take a short video if possible, using your watch or a GPS to show the date, time and location and report that information to Moorland Monitors and Hunt Investigation Team. Or call 101 for a non-emergency; 999 in an emergency and ask for Derbyshire Constabulary’s Rural Crime Team.
The time seems to have flown since my last post on this wonderful project documenting a family of Redstarts I started some weeks again now in the stunningly beautiful Peak District National Park. In my previous blog post you can read by clicking here the Redstart chicks had not long hatched.
I’ve been working on another project in the beautiful Peak District National Park photographing one of the UK’s most beautiful and stunning summer visitors; the Redstart. This attractive cousin of the Robin and Nightingale is one of my favourite summer visitors to our shores. They travel all the way from North Africa to the UK to raise their young before leaving for Africa at the end of summer which I find amazing.
