Tilgate Park

Tilgate Lake

This is another great spot for photography especially birds! I've been coming to Tilgate Park since I was a little girl. There are so many places you can see around Tilgate either walking around the large lake where you can often see Herons, watching Dragonfly's by the pond or just walking around the woods. As well as nature, Tilgate Park also hosts Go Ape, Smith and Western and a Nature Centre (I'll do a separate post on this soon) so there is plenty to do here! And the best thing about it is you don't have to pay to get into the park! Only car parking fees although. at the weekend the bus route goes straight into the park so I would recommend going by bus.

Tilgate Park is known for its range of heritage trees that have been planted here for over 200 years! One of the lesser known activities here is following the Tree Trial which I am yet to do but may try some tree photography soon! Me and my family often like to visit Tilgate, especially at this time of year, to look for mushrooms and fungi. However, due to it being very mild and not very wet recently I have found there have been hardly any this year?

I normally stick to going around the big lake as I have found this is the best way to find a lot of birds. Plus, due to being fed by the public the birds tend to be a lot closer then other places I have visited. I visited two weeks ago and spotted a few different species. Its a running joke in my family that when my dad is with me we will never get to take any pictures of herons because he always scares them off. This time amazingly we found a Grey Heron very close to the path (that did fly off) but we saw that it landed in a tree nearby and we were able to get some great close shots! I've shared my favourite shot below.

Grey Heron

A while ago I had visited the park and found a Mandarin Duck which I was hoping to spot again and we did. Mandarin Ducks are such a pretty species to photograph due to their bold colours! Unlike the Grey Heron it didn't seem very keen on being photographed and was much more interested in having a wash. I tried some motion photography but I'm still not sure how I feel about the results yet. Tell me what you think about them!

Also in the lake are some Mute Swans that I take pictures of every time and they never come out how I imagine. This time there were some young swans that were still mainly grey so I found it a lot easier to get better pictures due to the contrast to their white feathers. I love the way the pictures came out and the lighting was very good that day.

Tilgate Park is also a great place to walk dogs as long as they stay on the lead so if you like dogs this is the place for you as you will see so many!

Thanks for reading

Animills