I love observing nature through the changing seasons both in my Norfolk wildlife garden and the surrounding countryside. I blog about wildlife gardening as well as about Norfolk butterflies, wildflowers and other flora and fauna that I come across. Bookmark my Norfolk nature photo blog to keep up to date with my photographic adventures.
On my dog walk this week I enjoyed a beautiful rainbow, forgetting to check the wind direction, I got caught out by the hail squall it was caused by!
The rainbow colours came out beautifully against the dark inky sky.
The hail was hard and heavy and flocks of seabirds fled across Wells beach to seek shelter from the squall.
The hail was so dense and heavy it's created a mosaic effect in this shot of the beach huts.
January has been an odd mixture of golden sunrises and vivid sunsets with heavy overnight rainstorms, though here in East Anglia we’ve escaped lightly compared to the western half of England that faces the onslaught of the sou’westerly Atlantic storms. Here are three of my photos taken in the month attempting to capture these contrasting elements of winter in Norfolk.
December 2013 brought unusally mild winter weather to the UK in terms of temperature, but instead of snow the jet stream lashed us with a dangerous and violently destructive combination of high tides, and strong storm force winds that caused a sea surge on the North Norfolk Coast that was more severe than the infamous North Sea Flood of 1953. Thankfully in the intervening years sea defences were improved and held well. This time though the flood water was higher we had good warning that saved many lives despite wreaking havoc at many of the beaches and coastal reserves. The storm event has dramatically re-shaped the coastal environment, permanently changing the profile of the East Anglian coastline.
A visit to Wells beach about a week after the incident brought home to me the full force and elemental power of nature that had been unleashed. The sheer strength of the sea surge breached the two landmark giant dunes as well as sections of the previously dune-sheltered tidal lagoon channel towards Holkham beach, ripping out the wind smoothed sand hills, and the dune grasses that held their forms in place and ploughing thousands of tonnes of sand across the beach plain towards the beach huts and smashing a new vertical sand cliff when it reached the edge of the Corsican pine plantation.
Here is a small gallery showing the scale of the changes to the beach profile. The first shot is pre-storm.
Shafts of sunlight slanting down through autumnal woodland
As summer heat starts to fade into autumn mists and storms, its time to set my macro lens down with a tinge of sadness. Its been a wonderful butterfly year for me with three new first evers to my list, but now the season is turning. The butterflies are fading into warm bright summery memories of warmth with just the hardy commas and admirals feeding up on the flowering ivy preparing to hibernate. But of course the turning leaves augurs in one of the most beautiful landscape and wildlife photography seasons, so it is also time to pick up my landscape lens for the autumn colour and my long lens for the deer rut and the wintering birds all in their bright new winter plumage…
