Spring Stroll

Just a few shots I took whilst out on a family walk over Easter. The River Tees runs right through Barnard castle, the town where I grew up, and I have many fond memories of walking through the trees and listening to the running water.

Look what we found...

.... in our local pond! (Or boating lake, fake lake thingy in Alexandra park.)

We went to feed the ducks and instead we found a little terrapin. Well actually we found three but the two bigger ones were further away and didn't look so cute. And yes, the water really is that disgusting green colour! In fact it was a little smelly and there appeared to be as many plastic bags, bottles and other random bits of rubbish as there were fish....

Ladybird ladybird...

Taken with my 50mm lens as I was just out at the play park with the children and happened upon this little ladybug. Had I known there would be a pretty little bug on pretty little flowers then I'd have taken my macro lens and spent a bit more time over it!

I thought I'd play around with the colours today.

Mr. Squirrel's neighbour.

The children spotted this squirrel high up the tree in our next door neighbour's garden. They wanted me to get a photo of it so they can "put it in a frame on the wall".

I grabbed the zoom lens, told the children to be quiet and popped out the front door. Just as I'd got my settings right with a couple of test shots I heard a click of the door opening behind me and some loud whispering. Unfortunately so did Mr. Squirrel so he ran off!

I don't think Mr. squirrel is quite as pretty as squirrel nutkin who visits our bird feeder in the back garden but he did look very cute with an acorn in his mouth.

What time is it...?

...Lets ask our Dandelion clocks!

It took me numerous attempts with various children and dandelions before I finally got one decent shot of one of them blowing a dandelion clock and one decent shot of one of them holding it beforehand.

Moving on from the 50mm lens to the macro...