I was on Laxey beach in early June practising panning with different shutter speeds. At the time I was planning to take some photographs at the TT motorbike races and I needed to practice on some moving objects beforehand, so this surfer turned up at the right time.
Yesterday delivered glorious weather here in the Isle of Man but this was just one bank holiday weekend sunny day, sandwiched in-between Saturday and today where it rained hard all day. We took the opportunity to explore down the south of the island and visited Spanish Head, overlooking the Calf of Man, the Chasms and Chicken Rock. The choughs were out in their numbers and they danced above us with their loud distinctive “pee-yaa” calls.
The impressive purple heather covers most of the rocky landscape The footpath overlooks Cronk Karran, a Neolithical stone circle which is either a burial site or a hut circle.
The fearless death-defying mountain goats appear in a flock on the Laxey hillside a few times during the year. The pathway gets quite busy with walkers but the goats just keep a low profile and maintain a close distance to their flock. Sometimes there are a couple of stags keeping watch at the top of the hill.
The meadow at Ballanette wetlands is often bursting with butterflies and moths during this time of the year. My preferred is the six-spot burnet moth that I’ve been trying to capture clearly in a photograph. These photographs aren’t as sharp as I’d hoped but I was captivated by the tiny, almost invisible grasshopper balanced on a leaf. It could be heard but not seen at the time so I was pleased to see it appear in my image.
These are a few photographs I took recently at sunrise on Laxey shore.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been taking photographs of the Laxey sparrows that live in the roof of the beach ice-cream shop. I admire the gutsy one above who persisted on keeping hold and breaking up a gigantic twig for the nest.
Let the great wheel spin 