Corvids in Flight

The crow family or corvids gets a bad press. Words often used to describe these beautiful, and 'intelligent' birds include evil, cunning, vicious, sinister and murderous which has not been helped by their general portrayal in newspapers, film and books. They have in my opinion been wrongly accused of the steep and recent decline in UK song birds with inappropriate calls for culling above and beyond their usual daily persecution. In my view the changes and losses in bird habitat and the domestic cat are probably the major influences in small bird decline. In 2006 it was estimated their were 10.3 million domestic cats in the UK which is a large population of efficient predators. Another study showed that cats bring home about 4 small birds a year. I think the resulting maths speaks for itself yet noone obviously calls for a cull of cats. Corvids will take eggs and chicks from nests but then again woodpeckers are more predatory than you may realise. The crow family and song birds and have lived in harmony for thousands of years and common sense would suggest that other factors are at play here in the recent sharp declines of the latter.

Over the last couple of years I have spent many happy hours in their company. They are fascinating birds and the closer views has given me a great appreciation of the subtle beauty of their true colours. From a photography point of view they provide good subjects and often look at their most spectacular when in flight. However, capturing flight images of these birds has proved both challenging yet personally rewarding.

For this post I will concentrate on three species and start off with the Jackdaw. These birds are superb aerial acrobats.

The moment of touch down.

The magpie is a particularly maligned species probably because we have greatest contact with these birds as they visit our parks and gardens. They are particularly tricky to photograph in flight as they tend to be quite erratic. A further challenge is achieving the correct camera exposure on a black and white bird in the good light required to freeze them in flight.

I find that photography of these birds flying is at its easiest just before the point of landing.

My favourite pose for this bird is the head on landing when all the feathers are at full spread to slow the bird on it final approach but in photography terms these images are the most difficult to achieve.

Of course what these images unfrotunately do not show is the the iridescent blues, green and purples that can be only be seen on a dorsal view of these bird.

I will finish this post with some Rook images. This is a particularly overlooked species by bird photographers but I cannot for a moment imagine why. These birds have been a long running subject that I have pursued during my lunch hour at work and I am sure will continue to be so. Some sandwiches, a camera and a flock of rooks is a great way to spend 60 minutes.

I love the purple and blue sheen of these birds when the light hits them at the right angle.

As with the Jackdaws, Rooks are incredibly agile in flight.

The wing shape of these birds, with the long feather 'fingers', is on a par with many raptors and creates some interesting flight poses.

Hopefully this post will have helped you view corvids in a more favourable light For those who wish to find more, can I suggest that you wander over to the excellent Corvid Journal which has a wealth of information on these birds. For those who already share my passion for corvids you may wish to go and check out and help support one of the organisations, such as Corvid Aid, who undertake such brilliant and dedicated work rehabilitating injured birds for release back in to the wild.

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Return to the Green Nemesis

Regular readers of my blog will by now realise that to date my photography of Green Woodpeckers has been a continued struggle. There are two main reasons for my lack of success which I attribute to these birds being generally fairly thin on the ground in the north-west, compared to the south of the UK, and also due to their very wary nature. Often if you at look at one sideways from a good distance you will see it departing in undulating flight to the nearest tree. I have achieved better results this year with the species than previously which I view as some progress. However, they are not a species I have been able to specifically target and any photographs have come from chance encounters at a particular site I visit regularly.

Back in August I came across the male bird during an early morning session, hunting around for its ant breakfast in the dew soaked grass. The bird was starting to go through moult so not looking at its pristine best but when it comes to this tricky species any photos are welcome.

My observations of these very wary woodpeckers has taught me two main points that now steer my approach. Firstly the male birds, those with the red 'moustache', seem to be relatively more approachable than the females. Secondly if you can find a bird that is preoccupied feeding then your chance of approaching close is raised slightly above zero.

The main set of photographs from this session came when the bird became distracted whilst looking for ants along the edge of a footpath.

A moment to hold my breath and hope the bird would not fly off as it suddenly became suspicious and adopted an alert posture having heard the camera shutter.

A sigh of relief from me as it then relaxed and continued feeding.

Regardless of how careful a wildlife photographer is in their approach there are always factors beyond your control that can put a bird to flight. In this case a passing Sparrowhawk saw the woodpecker fly up to the refuge of the shady side of a nearby tree.

The bird stayed in this position motionless for a full 5 minutes before deciding it was not about to become a raptor meal and flew across to a small tree where I got my final photograph of the session.

This was probably my most prolonged encounter to date. When our next meeting will occur is difficult to say but hopefully this experience will leave me slightly better prepared. On the other hand the most likely outcome is the woodpecker will have different ideas and I will see the flash of its yellow rump as it disappears into the trees once more with its characteristic laughing calls.

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Bunting Bonanza

This is a follow-on from my previous post recounting my search for the sadly declining Corn Bunting (see here for previous post). Having finally located some birds I decided to return to the second area I had discovered for another camera session with these wonderful songsters.

Often when you find some obliging birds its pays to return for further sessions. Through repeated visits you learn the character of a species which in turn helps refine your fieldcraft and approach. The phrase 'make hay while the sun shines' seems apt as I was amongst the mid-summer crops of an extensive area of agricultural land.

It did not take me long to home in on the characteristics jangling song in the early dawn light. I found a bird in full song about 100m away from where I had photographed one during my previous visit.

The bright but overcast conditions provided some excellent and very even lighting conditions. As before the bird was regularly flitting between a select number of song perches.

My favourite song perch was a clump of flowering thistle so I spent the majority of the visit concentrating on this area. The purple flowers providing an extra dash of colour to the photos.

Overall it was a very productive few hours in the early morning, with only a small sample of the images taken shown here. I will no doubt return to the crop fields again next summer, now I have located the birds, and hope to try and get some flight photographs. This will not be easy but I know it will definitely be fun and a pleasure to spend some more time in the close proximity to these charismatic farmland birds.

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Burning the Midnight Oil

It 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 late with the shortening day length and so it was a bit of a dash around to get set-up for the first night. My experience of flash photography is very, very limited as I always prefer to use the light from the sky. Obviously this is not an option at night. For the first evening I decided to concentrate on an area of longer grass in front of one of the hides and set up three wireless flashes (kindly loaned to me) in an arc around an area baited with their favourite food, peanuts. A small trail of peanuts was then laid to draw the badgers to the area where I hoped to photograph them. All sounds good in theory and a few test photos looked good on the back of the camera although obviously missing the essential badger!

3 hours later and all was still quiet except for the night noises of owl, foxes, deer and rats moving and calling in the surrounding undergrowth. A further half hour passed before I caught my first sight of a huge male badger slowly making its way up the field. It picked up the peanut trail and slowly advanced until it was about a metre short of the 'target area' and stopped, looked at the small tripod supporting the flash, turned round and wandered back to the sett. This behaviour was repeatedly periodically over the next 3 hours, with up to four badgers present, which were wonderful to watch but with an end result of zero photos. I made my way to bed disappointed and frustrated, thinking about the necessary change of tactics required for the following final night.

The next evening I used a different hide and this time clamped the flashes to some small branches stuck in the ground to make them less obvious. Again peanuts were scattered in front of the arc of flashes and some trails of nuts to hopefully draw the badgers to my chosen spot. 2.5 hours passed with only barn owl briefly hunting across the field and the sounds of the night for company. The first badger finally appeared and once more homed in with its superb sense of smell on the the trail of nuts. Just as it reached the the 'target area', the batteries on all three flashes died in the space of about 30 seconds. I now had the badger in the perfect spot but no light....arrrgggh!. I had assumed having not taken any photos the previous night the batteries would be fine. Hard lesson learnt.

Once the badger had wandered off into the adjacent wood, I crept out of the hide and changed all the batteries on the flashes. Four badger-free hours later and I was starting to convince myself it was just not meant to be. Then the big male wandered out of the woods and directly across the field towards me. The photograph below is my first ever badger photo, and I can't but help wondering if its 'laughing' at me.

The badger came closer as it sniffed out and followed the peanut trail leading towards me.

It was not until the badger came across directly in front of me at close range that I appreciated its impressive size. I do not think this one will struggle through the winter given its accumulated fat reserves.

The big male disappeared down a sett entrance only to be replaced by the emergence of a another badger. Just as it wandered in to my' target area' and much to my disbelief the right hand flash died despite the new batteries, leaving just the two operational flashes to my left. Fortunately these carried on working and it was interesting to see how this small change of lighting has given a different feel to the photographs.

I eventually packed up at around 2am. A total of around 14 hours in a hide for a total of 30 photos was not as productive as I had anticipated. However, it was a still a wonderful and memorable experience and a good number of lessons were learnt for next time. I would like to thank Sandra and Richard for their hospitality and for my partner Dawn for putting up with my return in the early hours of the morning over the two nights.

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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 the first time was beaten by dire conditions with gale force winds blowing cloud across the tops of the heather.

The first birds we came across as we drove up to the summit was a group of Red-legged Partridge perched on a dry stone bathing in early light.

A promising start but not the species we were seeking. Having reached the moorland plateau, it soon became apparent that large numbers of birds had avoided the shooting parties, as the dawn air was filled with the distinctive calls of grouse.

Red Grouse are subtly beautiful birds, when viewed at close quarters, with intricate patterns of black across their rust colour feather. The moorland and heather provide a naturally attractive settings.

I say 'naturally attractive' as it is easy to forget that this is a carefully managed habitat to maximise the numbers of grouse available for the waiting guns in the latter third of each year.

Cutting and burning of areas of heather creates a mosaic of vegetation at different stages of growth and a plentiful supply of food and cover for the birds. Reminders of this habitat intervention were evident as white-grey curls of smoke rose from a smouldering patch of heather in the distance.

A bird on a previous burnt area.

At the time of our visit the deep purple colour of the summer heather had faded to a pink- orange hue which still provided a colourful setting for the birds, especially when taken at a very low angle.

As usual I was on the lookout to try and photograph the birds in a wide range of different settings which include calling out from patches of long wispy grass or perched on fence posts.

One of my goals for the trip was to try and capture some flights photos. This is a tough challenge as they are extremely fast flying birds, hence their popularity as a game bird, can be erratic in their flight and normally fly away from a person. Despite several attempts I only managed to capture a couple of flight images.

This last image provides a good example of their speed in flight as it was taken with a camera shutter speed of 1/2000s yet still the wings are a whirring blur.

An enjoyable and productive time was had by all, and I eventually reached home at the end of a long day at 7 pm. However, I intend to return once more next spring and hopefully try for some more of those tricky flight photos.

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The Nearly Monochrome Zoo

Back 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. Zoos are a great training ground for wildlife photography and I spent many happy hours in them when I first started. She really enjoyed the trip and on the next visit I intend to go a bit more in depth about the different camera settings.

When I got home I decided for a change that I would have some fun in Photoshop converting the images to black and white and also do some with selective desaturation. The latter is where you convert the image to black and white and then selectively bring back colour in parts of the image. This is a departure from my normal work in Photoshop as I usually do very little to my images beyond some minor adjustments and sharpening.

We started the visit with an easy large slow moving target, the Elephants. As usual they seemed to be enjoying themselves in the pool and waterfall. These are just straight black and white conversion. I must admit my experience of monochrome images is limited but I was once told the key is contrast.

The rest of the images in this post, except for the last, will now show selective desaturation. The effect on this first image is subtle as it has just changed the background colour on this Hornbill image from brown.

I like the use of this technique for birds that have bright eyes such as owls where only the colour of the eyes is retained. A Hawk Owl andthe strange looking Frogmouth.

For some images the technique produces a pleasing result. Flamingos with the water desaturated.

WARNING IMAGES BELOW SHOW GRAPHIC CONTENT OF CARNIVORES FEEDING

For others, such as this Giant Otter which had just killed a mallard that had flown by accident in to the enclosure, I am not so sure. I think this would have been a more pleasing image if the green water colour had been retained.

Chester Zoo have just acquired a pack of Painted Hunting Dogs and they were being fed as we arrived. Beautiful animals but you certainly would not want to be in the enclosure with them!

I will finish off this rather odd post with a full colour photo that has not been subject to any Photoshop treatment. Do not adjust your monitor :) While passing the bear enclosure the usual wild flock of jackdaws was milling around on the look out for any easy meals. Amongst the flock was a stunning looking leucistic bird. Natures own version of selective desaturation.

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