A Kingfisher!
Today we bunked off and went to Wacker Quay, to paddle up the river Lynher. We tried to paddle the Lynher from Saltash before, but the wind and the current down at the mouth of the river defeated us. So we thought we would try launching higher up. It was pretty tranquil up there.
We saw a kingfisher! I still don't quite have the nerve to go messing with long lenses and manual settings in the canoe, but the autofocus did not do an utterly terrible job, since he helpfully sat still.
The automatic settings are not much good at birds in motion though. We saw many egrets, with their long legs and white plumes and several grey herons, and of course lots of gulls and ducks, but none of my snaps of them came out at all. We also spotted a small bird that was diving and swimming like a grebe, and tentatively guess it to be a grebe. There turns out to be an actual species called the Little Grebe, so we decided it was probably one of those.
We canoed to St Germans! You have to be careful canoeing around St Germans, even at high tide, because the mud is really not very far below the surface.
These boats were moored in the channel. They must have to be SO CAREFUL when they go out for a sail to stick to the main channel. There were places where we couldn't even get the whole paddle into the water, and some of them were right in the middle!
Possibly that boat on the right just gnaws its way through the mud. Improbably, its name was 'Mandy'.
Back at Wacker Quay and the sun was going down...
The old concrete dock in the foreground was used for loading tanks onto boats in advance of D-Day. Hard to imagine now. We were the only people there, although it was a little less peaceful than it looks, because you could hear the traffic on the road to Torpoint droning away.
We saw a kingfisher! I still don't quite have the nerve to go messing with long lenses and manual settings in the canoe, but the autofocus did not do an utterly terrible job, since he helpfully sat still.
The automatic settings are not much good at birds in motion though. We saw many egrets, with their long legs and white plumes and several grey herons, and of course lots of gulls and ducks, but none of my snaps of them came out at all. We also spotted a small bird that was diving and swimming like a grebe, and tentatively guess it to be a grebe. There turns out to be an actual species called the Little Grebe, so we decided it was probably one of those.
We canoed to St Germans! You have to be careful canoeing around St Germans, even at high tide, because the mud is really not very far below the surface.
These boats were moored in the channel. They must have to be SO CAREFUL when they go out for a sail to stick to the main channel. There were places where we couldn't even get the whole paddle into the water, and some of them were right in the middle!
Possibly that boat on the right just gnaws its way through the mud. Improbably, its name was 'Mandy'.
Back at Wacker Quay and the sun was going down...
The old concrete dock in the foreground was used for loading tanks onto boats in advance of D-Day. Hard to imagine now. We were the only people there, although it was a little less peaceful than it looks, because you could hear the traffic on the road to Torpoint droning away.
