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.

2013 Revisited

I do not usually produce a retrospective end of year blog post but thought I would do one for a change. So I have picked a photograph or two from each month, each of which stirs particularly strong memories for me in terms of wildlife encounters.

January - saw me sat of a freezing North Wales beach photographing a flock of around a dozen Snow Bunting.

February - I headed up to the Highlands to try and photograph a Capercaillie. Such a magnificent bird which has left life long memories.

March - A prolonged cold spring and instead of photographing hares amongst the daffodils, they were boxing in deep snow.

April - Calling in to the Forest of Dean to break up a long long drive home from a work meeting found me with a long awaited Garganey in front of the camera for the first time.

May - I tried to restict myself to photograph from each month but failed in May which is always one of the busiest months for a wildlife photographer. A first light start saw a reeling Grasshopper Warbler in front of me. I have many photographs of these birds now but find myself drawn back to them each spring.

A chance encounter with a beautiful vixen.

June - I headed off on my annual overseas trip in June to Romania and the Danube Delta. A beautiful place filled with many wonderful birds. Here is one of the images from the trip of a Squacco heron feeding on a frog.

July - On my return from Romania I had a concerted effort with trying to photograph the extremely wary Green Woodpecker with a moderate degree of success. In this photograph the young bird on the left is watching the adult male excavate yet another ants' nest.

August- I returned to Scotland once again but this time to photograph the Ospreys at Rothiemurchus. An amazing experience just to watch, let alone photograph.

September - Throughout the summer I had been undertaking various sessions with water voles on a Cheshire canal. This was part of a long term project and some very enjoyable and relaxing morning were had by the waterside.

October - A fairly quiet month although I did head out to North Wales to try and photograph a Grey Phalarope. After several hours waiting the bird came close only to be scared away by the sudden appearance of a large dog, resulting in only a couple of photographs being taken.

November - An unexpected encounter with some Redwing feeding on rowan trees against a back cloth of autumn hues

December - Another chance encounter, this time with a beautiful male bullfinch whilst trying to photograph Fieldfare.

Of course December is not over yet and tomorrow will see me heading out to try and capture my first images of Mountain Hare. Hopefully this will produce some more special memories to add to what has been another interesting year in my journey in wildlife photography.

This will be my  last blog post for this year so I will take the moment to wish you all a Happy, Healthy and wildlife filled 2014.

Green Oasis

This blog post is my the second and the last part about my efforts to photograph the green woodpecker during this summer. Those of you that saw the first part will recall that this is an very difficult bird to photograph due to it being such a shy species and that I concentrated my efforts in a large graveyard which is the only place I know locally where they can be reliable found at certain times of year.

Cemeteries can offer some good opportunities for photography as they often provide a large oasis of green space within an urban setting in a similar way to parkland. They are relatively quiet and undisturbed places for the majority of the time and a steady trickle of visitors allows the wildlife (with the exception of green woodpeckers!) to become accustomed to the presence of people. Before you all rush out to your local graveyard with your camera, please consider the purpose and emotional sensitivity of the place. I have two basic rules which are visit at first and last light, which is best for the wildlife and light quality and when there are very few if any people present, and head to the quieter areas. I would urge you never to photograph around people visiting the graves of their lost relatives as this disrespectful and they should be given a wide berth.

Many people have said to me don't you find it a bit morbid, uncomfortable and odd spending so many hours on a burial ground. At first I use to spend time reading the gravestones as I waited but no longer do and to me it has become a large field with scatter trees, odd shaped stones and various birds and mammals. Typically I am so concentrated on looking for wildlife and keeping an eye on visitors that the actual purpose of the place seems to disappear. For green woodpecker photography the concentration factor is particularly high to spot the bird amongst the grass. This bird below is having a break from feeding and taking in some evening sun.

Anyway on to some green woodpecker photographs which after all is the purpose of the post. After several short sessions with the male bird I had got a good understanding of his behavioural routine during the evening which was allowing me to firstly find him and encouragingly to get photographs on each session. Some sessions were more successful than others but I knew by repeatedly visits I could built up a collection of images.

Green woodpeckers spend a large amount of time digging to find their main prey ants. A couple in action in the following photographs.

You will notice on the second of the photographs above the thick membrane that covers the eye to protect it from flying soil and also from ants. When they are busy feeding its is common to see several ants running around the bird's body, no doubt doing their best to try and fend off the attackers from the nest. One particular evening the male woodpecker was slowly excavating a whole in a patch of soil when the recently fledged young bird came hopping over. It watched the adult digging for a while before having a go itself. As with many things often the best way to learn is to watch an expert in action.

A couple more photographs of the solitary young bird which was usually fairly easy to find as it was incredibly noisy and repeatedly calling to keep in contact with the adult. You can see in the first photograph a small patch of red forming under the eye so it looks like this will be another male.

I will finish off with one of my favourite images from the sessions which is a dorsal view of the adult perched on a gravestone showing the lovely bright yellow flash of its rump. They really are such a beautiful looking woodpecker and it was a real pleasure to share some time, despite the inevitable frustrations, with such a camera shy bird.

By the end of July the birds became less predictable and patterns started to change until they both disappeared and the window of opportunity had closed. The male presumably went in to moult and the young bird will have dispersed to find itself a territory. Hopefully they will be back in the 'Green Oasis' next year to provide some more memorable summer evenings with the camera. 

The Green Woodpecker Challenge

Despite slowly extending their range northward within the UK, the Green Woodpecker remains a fairly scarce bird where I live in North-West of England.  There is one reasonably local site that this striking bird can be seen reasonably regularly which is an old graveyard where I have only ever seen the male and young birds present.  However, seeing a green woodpecker and photographing one is completely different challenge as they are extremely wary and unapproachable birds and can prove incredibly frustrating at times. Of course bird photography often requires you to get close to a bird, even with a long lens, which comes as a surprise to those not involved in wildlife photography. The common belief when someone sees a photographer with a long lens is that you are able to photograph your subject from several kilometers away but the reality is the bird actually needs to be within a few metres of you. The Green Woodpecker photography challenge is also compounded by the fact that I am trying to find a single green bird that spends most of its time in the grass and has hundreds of gravestones to hide behind in a 30 hectare area.

When I returned from Romania this year I was determined to have a concentrated effort trying to photograph this tricky but very beautiful bird. During the mid-summer period these woodpeckers become preoccupied with gathering their main prey of ants for their rapidly growing young, holed up in a tree somewhere unknown, and become slightly more approachable. I decided I would target the evenings, as it would allow an after work session and the graveyard would be generally quieter. The first task was to try and establish the movements of the solitary male bird.

The male below showing a bulging crop having excavated several ant nests in the course of the evening, with some still stuck on its beak.

I have learnt that Green Woodpeckers often show regular patterns of behaviour and will routinely visit certain areas at particular times of day which is no doubt is tied into the activity of ant nests. It took a couple of visits, and listening hard for that distinctive 'yaffle' call to locate the male before I worked out that he could generally be found in an area about the size of two football pitches between 6:00pm and 8:30pm. I then visited 2 to 3 evenings a week over about a month period. Slowly I started to capture some images and the more time I spent with the bird the more I learnt about how best to approach it. Soon I was starting to get full frame images. The important point was once located you could not let the bird out of your sight for a moment. If it made a short flight I used the graves as a reference point to where it had landed. On occasions it would seem to just vanish into thin air! Frequently it would hop behind a gravestone and I would wait for some time for it to reappear on the other side and it never would. I would re-position myself to try and see the bird and it would be gone, having hopped directly away from me with the tombstone shielding its 'escape'. The process of trying to relocate it would then have to start all over again and often proved unsuccessful. Another important lesson was the benefit trying to predict the route the bird would move along on the ground and to get in position and wait for it to hop towards me. This worked some of the time!

Inevitably with the site being a graveyard I ended up with the occasional photograph of the woodpecker perched on top of a gravestone, as it rested in between excavating ant nests.

Interestingly, I found the bird was very sensitive to the camera shutter noise, so I resorted to using my Canon 1DmkIV rather than the 1DX which is a great deal quieter in so called 'silent mode'.

Capturing the a Green Woodpecker perched on a tree is extremely difficult as it will inevitably move around to the far side away from you, occasionally peeking around the trunk to keep an eye on your position. On one occasion I was fortunate as a person passing forced it to move around the tree and into the line of my waiting camera. A photograph I have longed to take.

After about three weeks of evening sessions, a new woodpecker call could be heard, as a solitary young bird appeared.  It had obviously not been a very successful breeding year. The young birds appear to fledge with the same very wary  temperament as the adults.

From previous experience the young birds tend to follow the male who keeps feeding them while they quickly learn the business of finding ants and seem to become independent very quickly.

This usually only last a week or two and then all the woodpeckers disappear as the young disperse out of the adults territory and the adult goes into a late summer moult.

The photographs above are a selection from the Green Woodpecker challenge which actually went much better than I expected.  I will post more photos from these summer evening sessions in a future blog post. Some very memorable warm summer evenings were spent in the company of this charismatic species and I hope it is something I can repeat in future years having gained a better insight into how to get them in front of the camera.

Graveyard Greens

Green Woodpeckers are a difficult species to photograph for a number of reasons. They are a bird, even as juveniles, that are very wary of people and will fly off long before you have got remotely close to them either on foot or in a car. Often you may see one perched on the side of a tree but as you get closer they disappear around the back of the trunk out of view. Photographing Green Woodpeckers can be a frustrating pastime and is made all the more difficult by the fact that they are fairly uncommon in my local area. The main site I know they visit regularly is an old graveyard and this is where I have managed to get the majority of my photographs.

Graveyards and cemeteries provide an oasis for wildlife in urban areas and therefore some opportunities for the photographer. The frequent visitors generally make the wildlife more easily approach as they become accustomed to people, except of course for Green Woodpeckers.

There are a few points to consider when taking photographs at these sites. You need to have a good deal of respect and sensitivity for the purpose of the place and why people are visiting. I always time my visits for the very beginning or end of the day, the 'graveyard shift' as I call it, which is better for photographic light quality and wildlife activity. Usually my visits are from first light and often I have finished my session as the first people are starting to arrive to pay their respects to the departed loved ones. Also where possible I tend to use areas that are where possible at distance from graves, particularly new ones, and never photograph around any people.

It is easy to see why Green Woodpeckers like these sites as the regularly cut grass and disturbed soils allow easy feeding on an abundance of their primary prey, ants. However, given their green colouration they are not always easy to spot as they spend most of the time on the ground and often I find them by homing in on their distinctive 'yaffling' calls.

This adult male bird was feeding on a line of ants running up a kerb. If you look carefully you can see there are a couple of ants on the birds beak and shoulder.

I decided that a possible time when photography success may be increased with this tricky species is when the adults were still feeding their recently fledged young in the mid-summer period. My thoughts being that the distraction of foraging for the young may allow an easier approach, this proved to be partly the case. The photographs in this post are the accumulation of several evening sessions of photography.

I only encountered the male and two juveniles during these sessions, with no sight of the female at all. The male birds are distinguished by the red through their 'moustach'. Of course photographing in a graveyard does produce some images with some less than conventional perches. The stones that mean so much to us, to the birds are just convenient places to sit.

Hopefully the absence of the female means that she did not expire from the rigours of breeding or has not fallen prey to the large female sparrowhawk that frequently hunts the graveyard. These few short sessions proved to be my most successful for this species to date and I learnt a great deal which will hopefully go someway to help in the future, but knowing the difficulties of Green Woodpeckers, I am just being optimistic. With the juveniles now dispersed the adult male appears to have reverted to his old ways of being nearly impossible to approach. There is no doubt though it was a real pleasure to watch them and put some in front of the camera for a change, particularly as they are such strikingly beautiful birds.

I will finish off this post with a couple of images, firstly of one of the speckled blue-eyed juveniles.

and lastly the juvenile expectantly waiting for its next ant meal from the adult.