In and around Manchester

We spent a few days with my parents last weekend, enjoying their garden in late summer. The flowers were lovely and there were red admirals, commas and white butterflies fluttering around. The shadows above are on my parents' lawn.

While we were there we visited Rivington Pike, a lovely area of the West Pennine Moors. We also visited Martin Mere, a Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve. This reserve has a wonderful collection of wildfowl from around the world, including the ne-ne, a Hawaiian goose that the WWT were instrumental in saving from extinction. The ne-nes and the snow geese ate from my hand! The reserve also has extensive wetlands which are roosting grounds for large numbers of geese and wildfowl during the winter months. We were too early to see many of these birds, but there were some whooper swans, wigeon and teals, plus a good sized flock of lapwings, lovely in their butterfly style flight.



After our time with my parents, we went on to Dumfries for a few days - more about that to follow! But for now there's a Shadow Shot from near Dumfries over on my Over Forty Shades blog, you can see it here.