Winter Light

Photography is all about using light to show your subject at it best. For me, this is about using natural light as I don't use flash. Many years ago I tried some flash photography trying to capture small birds in flight and was so disturbed at the response of the birds that have not used it since. I don't have any problem with the use of fill flash during daylight for those that want to use it. However,  Aacurrent trend I find particularly worrying at the moment is photographing owls at night with multiple flash set ups at baited posts. With their highly sensitive night vision, this must be impacting on the birds with temporary blindness and their long term hunting success. Now I know there are all kinds or arguments surrounding this concerning the negative effects which I not going to enter into. All i can say is this practice seems wrong and it bothers me greatly.

For those photographers who just use natural light, winter is a very special time of year. The low elevation of the sun produces beautiful soft warm light to work  through large parts of the day. Unfortunately, living in cloudy north west England,  such days can be few and far between and so you have to make the most of them when they do occasionally arise. On occasions it can feel like an eternity of cloud between sunny moments. The other benefit of course is that it easy to get out at first light without the need to set your alarm to ridiculous o'clock, so you can have a nice relaxed start to the day and still be at your chosen site at sunrise to catch the first important rays. Even at this time of year, both ends of the day tend to produces the most evocative images.

The collection of images below are from my recent winter wanderings and in no particular order.

I have spent a little time down by the huge area of local salt marshes hoping to capture some short-eared owls. As with most photography of hunting owls it is a game of luck and whether they fly close to your chosen position. Given the size of the marsh, success rate can be fairly low and it requires many hours effort to be rewarded with only a few images. Given the time requirements, the moments when the sun is out and the owls are close occur even more infrequently.

When the sun does shine at this site in the afternoons it tends to be at a tricky angle and ranges from side lit through to full backlit.

Sat waiting by the marsh for long periods you do see plenty of other birds, particularly raptors such as hen harrier and marsh harrier although often at too far a distance for photography. Occasionally one does come closer. This is a silhouette of a marsh harrier hovering over the reeds at last light.

While waiting by the marsh, there are usually some small birds around the edge to pass the time such as Stonechat.

Another place I find myself waiting around quite a bit during the winter is one of the local marine lakes. This gets some interesting birds on it and can be good for photography as it allows in places for you to get right down at that water level perspective. However, with it covering an area of around 60 acres and having high numbers of visitors, catching the birds close to the edge requires paitence. I usually visit at first light when the number of people and dogwalkers around is low.

A Cormorant surfacing at first light.

There are usually several Red-breasted Merganser on the lake each winter.

This winter they were joined by two female Goosander.

One benefit of the number of visitors is that the wading birds are relatively accustomed to people which provides some photo opportunities while waiting. In this case a Redshank in flight.

One difference this winter is that there have been very high numbers of Brent Geese overwintering on Hilbre Island off the north west corner of the Wirral peninsula. Usually they stay on the island but some have been venturing over to the mainland this year which gave a couple of opportunities to put these long distance travellers in front of the lens for the first time.

Moving closer to home. At the end of the street where I live is the River Mersey, which gets reasonable numbers of waders on the intertidal area. For some unknown reason, I rarely venture down there with a camera. To get it at its best all the right conditions need to coincide with late afternoon sun and the right state of tide i.e as the tide is coming up to high water or ebbing away leaving a narrow strip of shore for the birds. As I work from home now, a couple of weeks back the weather and tides came together for a quick mid-afternoon break from the computer for an hour. It was an enjoyable brief session photographing a foraging Curlew and some Oystercatcher picking around the rocks for crabs and mussels.

Maybe I should try and visit the end of my street more often! It is all too easy to overlook what is on your 'doorstep'. Unfortunately it does not look like the sun will put in an appearance this weekend, such is the way of winter weather, but there is more promise in the forecast for next week for maybe a quick work break session. Fingers crossed for some more of that glorious winter light to come before spring is upon us.

Call of the Curlew

I still clearly remember seeing my first ever curlew. I was around 12 years old at the time and on a summer holiday break staying in a bed and breakfast in a quiet Yorkshire valley. A very different landscape to the area around the family home in the urban sprawl of south-east England. At that time I was a keen jogger and every evening I would head off on a run up the very quiet country road that wound through the valley. The light was starting to fade rapidly and on the hillside to my left I heard a sound that was completely alien to me, a plaintive bird call that evoked a beautiful sense of wilderness as it echoed through the dusk. It was then that I saw this fairly large bird,  silhouetted  as it skirted the hill ridge,  with a very distinctive long curved beak. My first curlew and as you tell it made quite an impression on me due to the fact I can recall the moment so clearly all these decades later.

Since then I have heard that wonderful sound of the curlew on many occasions and it always brings a smile. If you haven't heard one before then there is a recording on the link HERE . I am fortunate to have relatively good numbers of curlew close to my home in the winter. The birds descend from their summer upland breeding areas and gather on the coast to overwinter in the milder climate provided by the sea. The birds have used the same rough wet grassland field, which I have unimaginatively named the 'curlew field', to roost over high tide periods for many years. Typically there are around 50 birds present. Both male and female birds look identical except the females generally have the longest bills which they use to great effect to extract worms from deep within the soil below.

Curlew are wary birds which do the best to maintain as much distance between themselves and people. Typically they will start walking away from a person if they come within a 100 metres of them. So when photographing them everything has to be down very slowly and quietly. So for most of these photographs I was using kit that gave maximum reach so as not to disturb the birds. However, this does make it tricky when trying to photograph the birds in flight or if one does walk over very close. The Canon 7dmk2 performed very well and all of these were taken with this very capable body combined with a 600mm lens often with the tele-convertor added on the back.

It was particularly some flight photographs that I was interesting in trying to capture, although no easy task with an effective focal length of 1344mm!

In this high tide roost the birds spend long periods standing around sleeping and occasionally preening unless there is predator nearby. During one session a fox thought it would try and stalk the curlew but had little chance with 50 pairs of keen eyes watching and it gave up before it even got close.

The crows and gulls hassle the birds at the roost and occasionally a sparrowhawk will wing through that will put them to flight but generally all is relatively inactive. As the high tide passes on the coast, which about 150m to the north, the curlew start becoming more active. You can sense a restlessness amongst the birds which start stretching and preening, whilst small groups break away and start feeding. This period before they fly back over to the sandbanks as they are exposed by the ebbing tide provides the best opportunities for photography.

Before I started this post, I processed the images, and it was only then that I realised that this winter without any specific plan appears to have turned in to a bit of a curlew project. Time well spent in my opinion as these birds continue to hold a strange and strong fascination for me. The photographs below are from three brief afternoon sessions under the low winter sun. This soft golden light is always a pleasure to work with. They may not be the most colourful birds but I think you will agree that the patterning across the feathers in good light is beautiful.

It will not be too much longer now before the curlew start to depart and head back to the upland areas for breeding and the hills and valleys will be penetrated by that atmospheric call once again. I hope you are lucky enough to hear it yourself one summer's evening.

Feathered 'Selection Box'

Christmas is upon us once more. I am sure the years grow shorter as I get older as it seems like only a blink of an eye since the last.  I thought it was time for a seasonal selection box. However, this one is not filled with sticky spiced chocolates but some recent images of the local bird life. Typically the winter weather has not been particularly kind recently and in fact at times it has been bordering on very grim with frequent strong winds, plenty of rain and dark blankets of grey clouds above. As such, light, the essential element for photography, has been in relatively short supply. So it has been a question of being at the ready with camera and snatching odd moments when the light and free time have put in a combined appearance.

I have also been working on a small unexpected winter bird photography project which I will reveal in a future post. The delay in posting is mainly to protect these birds from unwanted attention and potential disturbance.

So lets not waste any more time and dip into the avian selection box. I will start off with a scarce bird for this area, the Long-tailed Duck. I asked a good friend of mine if he wouldn't mind looking in on a lake local to his home whilst passing, to see if there were any Goldeneye present. There were none but he sent a picture text to my mobile and said he had seen an unusual duck but was not sure what it was. I immediately recognised it as a Long-tail duck and more interestingly it did not seem to have been reported anywhere. Unfortunately not one of the stunning drakes but it was too good an opportunity to pass by, a scarce bird that the crowds of bird watchers and photographers had yet to discover. A quick visit was in order. I found the bird easily as it seemed to be staying away from the other birds up one end of the small lake and managed to get close by the old 'move when it is underwater' routine. After a few photographs it was slowly making its way along this small lake when I noticed a patch of reflected reeds that were turning a patch of water golden and this was the result.

The shortest photography session ever was recorded when I decided on a bit of flight practice with some Black-headed Gulls on the local marine lake. Despite a large patch of clear winter blue sky above, the low sun stubbornly refused to lift from behind the only bank of cloud except for about 2 minutes. This was the best I could muster on this icy, blustery day in 120 seconds.

We are still on the first layer of the selection box and this time a brief sunny morning session looking for some winter thrushes. In the distance I saw two birds feeding on a grassed area and assumed that these were my target. However, as I got closer I could see one was a blackbird and the other looked slightly odd, only revealing itself properly as I approached to be a Green Woodpecker, as it  flew up to a nearby tree. After a short while waiting and predicting where the bird might appear, I got the opportunity for about 2 seconds to get a couple of photographs of this beautiful shy female bird before it was gone.

The winter thrushes I was seeking I typically only found a flock  about 10 minutes before I had to leave. The Fieldfare has to rate as probably our most attractive visiting winter Thrush species. This one showing showing a typical drooped wing pose.

The flock was accompanied by a single Mistle Thrush that was also picking out fallen rowan berries from a gravel area. The birds having already completely stripped the tree above its fruit.

Let's dip in to the layer below of the selection box and see what lurks there. Ahh...seems to be a wading birds.

The first was taken on the way home after a wholly unsuccessful session with the small winter project I mentioned earlier. As I swung into the 'home straight' which takes me along the coast I noticed it was high tide and decided to check one of the regular roost for wading birds. They are not always there and I thought may be absent that morning as it was a fairly large tide but was pleasantly surprised to find around 50 Redshank, and a similar number of Turnstone perched high on the rocks. However, what really drew my attention were three Purple Sandpipers and so concentrated on those.

My next encounter with some waders was on a day when I decided to head out for some Red Breasted Merganser on the local marine lake. I like to photograph swimming birds on either very calm surface or the dynamic conditions of rough water. The forecast was for strong westerly winds but it turned out to be blowing much harder and much colder than expected. The marine lake resembled the North Sea in a storm and so there was little chance of seeing, let alone photographing the Mergansers. However, the first light visit coincided with a rising tide which would see the wader flocks coming into roost. A good number of Redshank, Turnstone and a few Dunlin and a solitary Knot had gathered.

I took a few photos and noticed spray being blown into the birds from the crashing waves driven by the punishing wind which created an interesting effect backlit in the first light of the day. I thinks this photographs gives a great impression of the harsh weather we were all enduring that morning.

After I while I decided it would be good to head home and get my hands round a warm coffee, leaving the tough wading birds to sit it out. I took a route home that would see me pass an area that curlew often use at high tide when the sand banks are covered with water. I have always liked curlew. They may not be the most colourful birds but are beautifully patterned and surely possess one of the most evocative bird calls. The birds were across the road from their usual area and seemed to be getting disturbed by the Sunday morning dog walkers. Fortunately one dog walker pushed the birds right over to where I was waiting.

With that the bird selection box is now empty. For those of you interested, all of the above with the exception of the Purple Sandpiper were taken with a Canon 7d Mk2.

So I would like to take this moment to wish you all a Very Merry, Healthy and Peaceful Christmas with a suitably tacky e-card.