Wildlife Wonders

After a morning of heavy rain and a journey that included just a few wrong turns, we arrived at Lower Woods Nature Reserve which is managed by Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. Our junior group The Get Grubby Gang had organised a wildlife photography walk with Iain Green from Wildlife Wonders.

Once everyone had arrived we set off on our walk, Iain encouraged us to slow down and notice details in forest surroundings - from raindrops to spiders, caterpillars to petals, we even found a toad, some leeches and an example of Britain's rarest orchid.

My favourite type of photography is macro photography- getting close up images of tiny objects such as insects, flowers, lichen and fungi. Part way through our walk, we descended a very muddy slope to discover numerous common orchids, the bees feasting on these gave me a great photo opportunity.

In contrast to macro photography I also had fun with my SLR camera using a fast shutter speed to capture images of my friends splashing in the muddy puddles.

I really enjoyed visiting Lower Woods and hope to visit again to see how it changes with the seasons.