Burning the Midnight OilIt has been many years, apart from the sad sight of road kill, since I have seen a badger. Certainly I have never photographed these nocturnal mammals. So last week I decided to take myself off for a couple of days to a farm down south that has been set up for photography. The site has a number of hides overlooking a flood lit area frequented by well fed badgers that importantly are oblivious to camera flash.I arrived fairly...

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Gone for Grouse'Gone for Grouse' was the message I left on the kitchen worktop for my patient better half, as I left the house with my friends for a day trying to photograph Red Grouse in North Yorkshire. A 5 a.m departure was necessary to try and arrive at our chosen area on the moors at first light. This was the same area I had travel through a few months earlier, during a journey northward. Then my efforts to try and photograph Red Grouse for...

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The Nearly Monochrome ZooBack in the summer, I took my better half's sister to Chester Zoo as she is very keen to learn about photography. I had already donated a camera to her, that I won as a competition prize, kitted her out with a 100-400mm lens and we were ready to go. The main purpose of this first trip was just to get her use to taking photographs and to think about framing the shot and getting around the obstacles present by the enclosures....

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Too Late for TernsEach summer I like to have at least one good session with some of the local Common Terns. I have always been attracted to the streamline elegance of these 'swallows of the sea', particularly during their twisting acrobatic flight. This year the mental alarm clock kept ringing out that it was time to pay them visit. However, due to other commitments the trip ended up being continually postponed until way past the optimal mid-summer...

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Code Red Corn BuntingWildlife photographers always have a wish list of species that they would like to put in front of the lens. For those who photograph birds the list is often headed by dramatic or colourful species such as kingfishers and owls. My personal list includes some species that are not immediately obvious but which I have always found myself drawn to. One such species, which is usually tucked away on the last page of bird identification...

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Plan W - The Final SessionAs I left home, before the sun had risen, I decided that the session ahead would be my last with the pair of Whinchat. I had really savioured my time with them and I knew that there was little more photographically I could get from the situation. I was greeted by the female, perched at close range, in the soft early light of an overcast morning. The birds were now fully accustomed to my presence and hardly showed a flicker...

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