“Great things come in small packages”

A glorious sunny morning, car packed and time for a trip to Yorkshire to drop of a new Opticron ES80 telescope for our good friend Paul Ferguson.

We headed straight out to a small nature reserve, not far from Paul, I’ve not been to before ‘Rodley nature reserve. This reserve may be small and compact in size, but it has a varied selection of habitats, dragonfly ponds, dipping ponds, wildflower meadow, wet grassland, a river walk and the managers garden. Rodley is open Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday and some bank holidays, check their website for details, www.rodleynaturereserve.org

Our first stop was at the dipping pond, where we found some children with nets and trays giving it a try.

A short stroll to the dragonfly pools, where there was a large number of Brown hawkers, not resting unfortunately. Also Common darter and Blue damselfly. Clearly a popular spot for dragonfly’s, at Rodley nature reserve.

We pressed on a little further to see some people looking at something on the footpath, my first thoughts was a small lizard, but upon investigation discovered it was in fact a Smooth newt, so small but that was a new tick for both myself and Paul. After allowing it to cross the footpath safely, we pressed on.

First hide not much about, a few Moorhens & Mallard. On to more hides, then finally to the Lagoon hide and time to test the Zeiss Hapia 95mm in bright sun, with a lot of heat haze, a very obliging a Gadwall posed quite nicely, not too much haze, a Heron taking a break from the blazing sun, while keeping his cool in the water.

Must have got chilly, he came out to pose!!!!

As I was having a scan through some images, in popped a Great White Egret, I quickly put the phoneskope adapter back on the scope to grab a few shots,the Great White Egret had only turned up today, he was very obliging.

I will definitely be going again, this reserve has a visitor centre, for light refreshments, also disabled parking and toilet facilities. So this reserve may be small and compact, as the saying goes “good things come in small packages”

#theopticsgirl #focalpointoptics #zeissharpia