Pembrokeshire

 

Back after a good week away at St.Davids, with the bonus of better weather than was originally forecast.

Plenty of places for a pot of tea, which is always welcome for me.

Back to it now, and planning a few projects for winter.

Solar eclipse - Wednesday 12th August 2026

 The country seemed to be gripped with "Eclipse fever" this week, as the first solar eclipse for many years was due to happen when viewing conditions were good. I wasn`t expecting the chaotic scenes that were on the news and online, with roads jammed and people triple-parking.

I decided to go to the a quieter area, but there was still heavy traffic for a fee miles before it thinned out. My plan was to solely get the sun being covered by the moon, rather than stacking a sequence across the sky, so I chose to use an infrared filter (IR850) so that the camera sensor would hopefully not get damaged during exposures.

The resulting shots produced a surreal magenta colour, which I liked when I was doing some test shots a few days before. Some of them seem to come straight out of "pacman"!

I took two shots every five minutes from about 6.15pm to 8pm (with the peak being 7.13pm), and have just collaged some of them.

My favourite shot has to be around the peak at 7.13pm, which I might just get printed up on canvas one day. Such a thing to experience.

This shot is just a few seconds early - the moon moving from right to left.

I`m glad I shot in infrared as it`s different from anything else i`ve seen out there.

Kingfisher success again

 

It`s been a long time again since my last blog post yet again, but worth an update now as there has been success with the second brood of Kingfisher on the Reserve side at WWT Llanelli. 

There was a male and female fledged in mid-May from the first brood, but I can confirm a male fledged yesterday (Monday 3rd August), together with another that quite possibly fledged the day before.

We are hoping that another bird might have fledged today, as the adult female was taking in fish to the nest site as well as feeding the one that had just fledged (in the image above).

Fingers crossed.

(For the blog post I posted last year about Kingfishers on the Reserve in 2025, click here:

https://russartworx.blogspot.com/2025/12/kingfisher-breeding-success-at-wwt.html )