Dunham desires

On Monday morning myself and bro Paul got in the Fabia and drove to Dunham to spend the day taking photos of the autumn gorgeousness and hopefully many shots of the deer before rutting.

The day proved warmer than anticipated and both of us were rather warm as we'd overdressed, but we couldn't be bothered removing various articles as we'd no room in our bags what with our camera kit and picnic in them. Oh and Paul's tripod that looked like it was trying to strangle him when he carried it!

First port of call was the sawmill and the stunning reflections of the barn and clock tower in the moat. Whilst Paul was taking shots of the moat I wandered off to a tree stump and it's lovely collection of fungus where I got to practice macro before returning to the moat for some shots myself.

Onto the main house and for once I managed to get a shot of the listed building without any body, buggy or bloody idiot getting in the way and with the nice sundial central to the building. Paul was also taking multiple shots here and I got mine over his head while he squatted down to take his shots from a lower angle.

After the Hall we wandered over to one of the lakes where last year we saw a massive orange Koi Carp. He'd gone from the lake now, hopefully he's been moved into the larger lake. There weren't many swans, coots, or moorhens here either so the wildlife shots were thin on the ground, but I did get some gorgeous shots of the lake and the trees reflected in it. Again while Paul was taking shots I wandered over to a fallen tree to take some 'arty' shots (I like quite bizarre architectural type shots). While here I heard a cricket 'singing' looked round and found him on one of the fallen trees where he seemed happy to have his picture taken and slowly wandered over to his mate who, again, seemed happy to just stand still while I took multiple shots of them. Paul cursed himself when he saw what he was taking as he'd left his macro lens at home and couldn't do any close-ups. Tsk. Still, all better for me as I need the macro practice.

Wandering about and over to another lake, Paul began taking glorious shots of the lilies and swans while I set off looking at the ground in search of more macro possibilities, and came across a good few things. And a stunning view across another lake with beautiful skies and colours in the grasses.

We finally found a stag (in the whole day we only saw 4 deer (2 stags and 2 females - pretty sure they were the same stag/female on both occasions!) and I managed to get a good picture of him lay down in the grass. Not as good as I'd have liked though as my camera is only a compact and therefore the zoom isn't as great as Paul's SLR, but still, it is one of the best pictures of deer that I've taken.

After the stag got bored and wandered off we set off in the opposite direction and came across the old slaughter house in the woods, where I found my nice architectural/arty things to shoot and yet more macro!

Last port of call was back to a lake and the woods behind it where we watched several squirrels frolicking in the sun and leaves, while one was busy burying his findings for a possible harsh winters lunch,and while we got bombarded with beech nut cups as it seemed that every tree had multiple squirrels in the canopy stuffing his tummy and little cheeks and dropping what he didn't want onto the floor. After we both got hit several times we decided to head off back to the car as we'd managed to spend about 6hrs wandering around!

These and more photos are on my photo blog avixpics