Garden Buzzards - 12 Months On

It is almost a year since I started to feed the Buzzards in the garden and the pair are coming down daily now. They recognise me to the extent that I only have to go outside and they will suddenly appear, calling and circling around, hoping that I am going to feed them. They now get quite frantic when I put the food out for them, noisily sitting in the trees nearby and will swoop down to feed as soon as I go back to the house.

North Wirral Coast

A few shots from a couple of weeks ago. The winds weren't quite strong enough or in the right direction to bring the Leach's Storm Petrels as close as hoped, although I did get a couple of "at sea" images. Here's some of the species that were close enough for photography.

Leach's Storm Petrel

Little Egret

Little Egret

Oystercatcher

Common Redshank

Black-headed Gull

Red Grouse

In August a trip was arranged to the Yorkshire moors to photograph Red Grouse in the flowering heather. The majority of the birds were in family groups, with the younger ones still not in full adult plumage. We did manage to get some shots of male adults though. It was a real contrast to the previous years visit in October when the heather had finished flowering. I now have a total of 150 Red grouse images on my main website.

 

Garden Snails

With such a wet summer and with so many Snails around, I spent a few evenings photographing them. For such a simple and slow subject it was quite a task to get the right poses.

 

Kestrel Up Close

Earlier this week I had the fortune to encounter a very obliging Kestrel. It was hunting for food with brief spells of hovering and then perching on posts, sometimes landing within 10m of where I was standing.

Common Darters - Up Close

I had a play around yesterday with some macro shots of Common Darter dragonflies. It is amazing watching them catching flies in mid air. On the second picture you can see it is holding it's freshly caught prey. It must be pleased with itself, as it has such a lovely smile.

Badgers

At the end of June I spent three days in Oxfordshire with my friend Rich photographing Badgers. I have never properly attempted flash photography before and was a little apprehensive, not knowing what the results would turn out like. The first night was a real test with pouring rain. In actual fact this was probably a good thing as the Badgers were very active, probably due to the worms that had come to the surface. Other advantages were that the noise of the rain drowned out any sounds that we were likely to make in our pop-up tent hides as they were at times within 6ft of us. Presumably the rain was also keeping our scent down. I was pleased with the first nights results and liked the fact that the Badgers were so wet.

The second night went fairly well, they all came out at the same time. Some of the larger ones fur was covered in mud from going in and out of the wet sett entrances, it was a nice contrast to the first night. The third night was a bit of a disaster for me. Rich and I had swapped places that we had been in for the first two nights and I was lower down in a bit of a bowl. There was absolutely no wind at all and I think they could smell my scent. They wouldn't come close at all and after 7 hours I had managed only 14 shots. Frustratingly I could see Rich's flashes going off as I sat in my hide, there must have been a little bit of air flow in the right direction where he was situated. None the less it was a great few days and I was very pleased with the results.