Autumn Tufties

Autumn Tufties

As I'm sure many of you will have realised by now, trees shed their leaves in autumn, but in the short period before this, the leaves show off vibrant, warm colours that provide ideal light for any photographer.

These colours are emphasised even more over water, where reds, oranges and yellows blur and merge together... and when there is the potential of wildlife to fill the frame as well, its an added bonus! For me locally, there is nowhere better to find wildlife, trees and water than Richmond Park, where the wildfowl are also used to humans walking through daily, allowing me to get closer to the subjects.

I started off at Pembroke Lodge, where a walk through the dying grasses and ferns saw a few Redwings fly over, and a Reed Bunting call in the scrub near a quiet pond...

From there, it was on to Pen Ponds, where the sun had finally come out, and lit up the Ponds with a late autumnal orange glow. Tufted Duck were numerous out on the lake, and would hang at the back of a party of ducks being fed bread, ready to catch any pieces that were missed by the main gang of Mallards, Black-headed Gulls and even a Shoveler! The female, with its fudge coloured plumage...

Now and then one would dive under, and appear amidst the frantic group at the front, nip a piece of bread and go back under, and other times they would just show their cute face and beg for a piece...

Aww... who wouldn't give this little guy a piece a bread and break its heart...



The males are very smart looking, with a comical tuft, that would be lifted in the wind, turning them into little punk rockers...

As the sun went lower over the tree-line, it would shine on the seemingly black face of the birds, and produce a smart purple glossy sheen...

A Taste of Lapland... in Staines?

A Taste of Lapland... in Staines?

Firstly, sorry for the lack of recent posting; I have to admit that I haven't put much dedication into photography over the past few weeks, but I'll try and change things a bit over this half-term and get something a bit more interesting in front of the camera.

October is arguably the best month of the year for seeing interesting birds turn up in weird places. With summer and winter migrant birds moving across countries, a few gems always manage to get lost and find themselves on our shores, being quickly snapped up by twitchers. I have never been into twitching, but it is extremely hard to resist the urge to go out see an unusual bird, with so many around... So when those two words that make even the most heartless of twitchers happy, 'still present', appeared on LondonBirders news page, next to the reported Lapland Bunting that has been kicking about at Staines reservoir a few miles down the road, I couldn't resist going to have a peek!

Okay, so Lapland Buntings are far from rare, being annual winter migrants to the coast in small numbers, but they are still quite scarce in Surrey, and being a species I've never got round to seeing, it would be great to finally connect with one.

The weather didn't look particularly promising for taking photos, and I almost left the cam in the car as we opened the car door to be greeted by hailstones. Luckily, it didn't last long, and as we walked up to the causeway that passes straight through the middle of the reservoir, feedback from returning birders was that the bird was showing well. It didn't take long to locate the Bunting along the narrow path, and just as we moved in, the bird flew up, skimed the surface of the water then land back on the causeway, in between the small group of people watching it, splitting the group in two...

The Lapland Bunting was suprisingly obliging, and I've certainly never got this close to any other Bunting species before. However, for the first few minutes after landing in a certain spot, it would keep a healthly distance between itself and the observers until it settled down...

As the bird got more concentrated on feeding in the grass, it would possible to get closer, down to around 6 or 7 metres, still just too far away for a frame filling shot... so there has been a tad bit of cropping done in today's post!

I usually think of most passerine's winter plumage as being relatively drab and non-attractive, as they have no breeding purpose, but when seen up close, the different shades of brown on the Lapland become neatly layered streaks of chestnut, with shades of white and black mixed in, and really add to the overal attractiveness of the species...

Spot the bird- the Bunting's favoured hang out, near the entrance to the causeway...

After a while, a nearby Linnet flock went up, and the Lapland Bunting followed them over the edge of the causeway, where it couldn't be seen. After 20 minutes and still no sign, I wandered up the causeway to see if there was anything out on the reservoir. A Black-necked Grebe had been reported, but I couldn't get onto it. Small groups of Shoveler, Gadwall, Wigeon and Tufted Duck were scattered around, as were Great-crested Grebes and numerous Cormorants.

Back at the Bunting's crib, there was no sign, and so we decided to call it a day. As we were just about to leave the causeway, the Linnet flock flew over our heads, and whilst they carried on flying, a lone bird stayed behind and perched in full view on the railings... the Lapland Bunting!

What a brilliant bird, and a great little character. What with the summer over, I can't just keep updating the blog with little insects all the time, so I'll try to fit in a few more sessions like this for specific birds before half-term is out. Damn, I think I might be catching the twitching bug...

Lots of Green

Lots of Green...

Haven't been getting out in the field much recently, but I did try out the macro lens on this baby Stink bug. They look totally different from the adults of the species, and I did think it was a totally different species until I had a proper look on the interweb.

Hopefully I'll post something interesting soon. There's a Spotted Crake just down the road from me which I'm currently contemplating on paying a visit. Knowing my luck though, just thinking about the bird will cause it to leave; currently contemplating a Crake... try saying that after a few pints.

Bushy Park Sunset

Bushy Park Sunset...

The weather over the last couple of days has been brilliant, and every night there has been a nice sunset to finish off with. The other evening I decided to cycle down to Bushy to see if I could catch the sunset using the wide-angle lens, with a backdrop of the surrounding grassland. I almost missed it, with an unexpected build-up of cloud.

With the gates about to be shut and the light going, I didn't spend long in the park, but just had enough time to get some photos as the sun went behind the clouds for the last time.

Silver-spotted Skipper

Silver-spotted Skipper

At this time of year, as we enter the autumn, few species of butterfly are emerging for the first time. Silver-spotted Skipper is one of these few, and for a few weeks between mid-August and early-September, this species can be found flying fast around suitable chalk downland habitats. They are quite rare and confined to a few spots around the south of England.

A real stronghold for this beautiful butterfly is Old Winchester Hill, in Hampshire, where its favourite caterpillar footplant- Sheep's Fescue, thrives on the south-facing chalkland slopes. Old Winchester Hill is not only good for wildlife, but is also a great place to just go walking with the family, so we went down there early yesterday morning to try and catch up with these butterflies.

The weather couldn't have been any better, with hot sun, and very little wind meaning that butterflies would be out feeding in the open, taking advantage of the weather window. One species certainly taking advantage of the weather was the Chalkhill Blue, which was out on the hillside in very large numbers, allowing me to try out the new lens on them...

Note the chequered markings on the edge of the hindwings that distinguish Chalkhill Blue from any other species of British blue. This is a female...

The majority of the Chalkhills on the hill were males, and when a female turned up, it was a scramble to try and mate with her...

The lucky guy...

As we got further into the walk, more butterflies started to appear, such as the below Small Copper, but there  was still no sign of Silver-spotted Skipper...

Before we arrived at the reserve, I'd done a bit of research online, and according to Alan Thornbury's brilliant site (documenting the butterflies of Hampshire), the best place to see the skippers on Old Winchester Hill were the slopes to the south of the Hill Fort.

With this in mind, I headed over there, and was not disappointed. I soon caught a glimpse of one of these fast flying insects as it dashed past me, but their speed, and in ability to keep still mean't they were an absolute nightmare to photograph. After 30 minutes of chasing them around the downs, I opted for a new method and decided to see if the butterflies would come to me. Before too long, a Silver-spotted Skipper came and landed a few metres away, and after a bit of crawling on all fours, I was close enough for a frame-filler...

The butterfly was very laid back, and did not react to movement like I'd expected it to. It allowed me to move  around to a side on view- its when viewed side on with wings closed that you can really begin to see why its called a Silver-spotted Skipper!

This is probably the last new butterfly I will add to my list this year, and almost completes my challenge to see all British Skippers, with just the absence of Chequered Skipper, a very rare species confined to a few areas of Scotland.

A great day, with a great butterfly to boot. I thik I'm going to have a lot of happy outings with this new lens... although prehaps not as much as I'd like to in the next few months, what with college starting soon. One things for sure, I could do with another summer!!

Macros at Bookham Common

Macros at Bookham Common...

I've been wanting to get a proper macro lens for insect photography for quite a while now but the lenses have always been out of my price range. Recently however, I found I had saved up enough money to buy myself a Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro lens. The lens has been given brilliant reviews so I was expecting good results when I gave it a little test run at Bookham Common yesterday.

The weather was perfect for insects, with sunny skies and a gentle breeze meaning everything was active.

Scorpion Fly were numerous, so called because of their abdomen which appears to curl like that of a Scorpion, although you can't see it from this photo. The len's autofocus isn't it's strong point, being quite noisy and slow, but for macros I mainly use manual focus, which is easy and quick to use; allowing me to quickly adjust the lens to focus onto this flighty insect...

The lens' extremely close focus distance gave nice, frame filling shots of Helophilus Pendulus, a common Hoverfly on the Common, without any need to crop...

And of Common Darters, looking a bit worn for wear as we enter the autumn...

And a Speckled Wood, which allowed me to get close whilst it sunned itself...

I almost looked right past this spider, which had positioned it's legs so that it was as thin as the stem, presumably to allow it to catch prey un-noticed...

An added bonus was stumbling upon some young Toad along the path, and with help from the family, they were safely moved to an area of moist grass...

This lens couldn't be more different from what I'm used to, and the distance it can focus to is absolutely phenomenal to me at least, whilst still producing sharp and clear images.

A real test for the lens will be when I go to try and photograph a rare butterfly, occupying chalk downland in the South for just a few weeks every year, on Old Winchester Hill. See how I did in tomorrow's post...

Good Weather For Ducks

Good Weather For Ducks...

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if even the ducks are getting a bit pee-ed off at all this rain that is falling out of that grey mass of crap above our heads-- although some may like to call them clouds.

However, due to the undeniable fact that I've neglected all local patches that I ever had, I had to get down to Bushy Park. Luckily, there was a weather window; the sun was shining, and birds were singing... only kidding, it was raining and it seemed that, as we got out of the car, the weather deliberately decided to get worse, from typical English summer, to the kind of weather I would expect on Shetland in an extremely bad winter. However, knowing that the ducks were craving to have their photos taken of them, I pushed on.

There were no ducks on the main lake, unless you can call a branch looking like a duck a duck, which technically you can't. However, all wasn't lost. I found a duck! An eclipsed male Red-crested Pochard,  on the next lake further up from the main lake, looking pretty annoyed at himself for not booking that holiday to the Caribbean a little earlier...

I'd post a photo of the branch to brighten up the post but I'm not very confident on the identification (it's been so long since I last saw a British duck I'm starting to forget what they look like). It could be a Red-billed Whistling Duck, or a Baikal Teal... probably blown in with all this weather.

To lighten up the subject, I look outside as I write this to a smidgen of blue sky. Who knows, prehaps that tiny seed will grow into a mighty oak, prehaps the sky will change colour overnight, and we will wake up to a new world... I doubt it. I think we've all learn't a lesson today- never go out in the rain because you won't see any ducks, so don't even bother trying.

Menorca- The New Birding Approach

Menorca- The New Birding Approach

Sorry for the lack of posting recently, I know how much you have haven't been missing my fabulously  poorly stringed-together posts, amazing rubbish pictures and frequent occasional updates.
Anyway, I'm back, and more good news is that I found my preferred method of wildlife watching whilst in Menorca over the last 2 weeks. It included a deck-chair, cold drink, hot sun and preferrably a pool or beach as the habitat.

Our villa was situated on the south coast of the island, and like most of Menorca, the area extremely rich in wildlife, mainly due to the government rejecting many plans to build large tourist resorts and other attractions that could leave Menorca heading for the same fate as Ibiza (no offence Ibiza, and not that I don't like that kind of lifestyle).

With wildlife came photographic subjects, and one of the first birds to hit the camera lens was a Turtle Dove; a species I have yet to encounter in Britain, and with its current rate of decline, my chances of seeing it are getting slimmer. No such problem in Menorca however, where their weird and bloody annoying two note call would wake me up every morning!

Another commoner in and around the garden was the Spotted Flycatcher, and every evening a family of six would congregate on the telephone wires outside the villa and flit around in the evening light. The problem was that they would usually appear just after the sun had gone down for a 10 minute period, and the light was not brilliant for a frame filling 300mm shot.

However, this shot was an exception, and I managed to catch the bird in good enough light to make it showable...

Whilst waiting for the Spotted Flycatchers to show up, my vantage point gave a good view of the sunset...

What we didn't realise when looking at the villa on the internet, was that they had a resident family of Hermann's Tortoise living in their garden. The tortoises had a mind of their own, and were constantly on the move, feeding off salad and roaming around the house like it was theirs. This family included at least two very young tortoises. To give you an idea of size, the baby on the left is not much bigger than the palm of your hand... dinky or what?

Talking about reptiles, as you'd expect on a hot Mediterranean island, lizards were abundant, but very hard to get close enough to identify, let alone photograph. Probably the most common lizard in the area was the Italian Rock Lizard, originally imported into the Balearic islands from surrounding Europe, being resident in Italy (would never have guessed!) and much of mainland Europe.

Occasionally, I would take a lizard by surprise whilst it was sunning itself in the glorious weather and it would give me a few seconds to take a shot (try and ignore the whappin' great green grass stem going slap bang through the middle of the shot. Typical)...

But it wasn't all about common species... oh no. Whilst scanning a wader scrape at Es Grau nature reserve, one of the largest of it's kind in Europe, watching Black-winged Stilts and a Marsh Sandpipers, I got onto a large, stocky Moorhen type bird with a stocky bill. There was no mistaking it... a Purple Swamphen!

A very local and rare breeding bird in Europe, where it is only found in marshy areas of the Balearics. Score!

Yeap, yeah... that tiny blob in the middle of your screen wading through that swamp is a Purple Swamphen, honest! And it is purple, not that you can tell from this awful photo...

A slightly more scenic view of Es Grau NR...

There were plenty of insects to photograph at Es Grau. Most of the butterfly species I couldn't identify, as I had no knowledge whatsoever of Mediterranean insects, and I even needed help identifying the following Common Blue and Speckled Wood (both common in Britain)...

Common Blue...

Speckled Wood...

Just about the only damselfly I could identify, a Blue-tailed Damselfly. Relatively common here in Britain but one I've yet to see at home...

As the days went on, I found the amount of time I spent with the camera was decreasing almost as dramatically as the little Turtle Dove from Britain, and the amount of time I was spending on the beach was increasing. Before I knew it, the 2 weeks were up and I came away with a surprisingly empty SD card.

Sadly, many species missed the camera; Orphean, Sardinian and Cetti's Warbler, Egyptian Vulture, Black Kite, Hoopoe and Bee-eater are just some of the beasts that managed to vanish the second I pointed my lens in their face.

Ah well. All in all a very nice holiday, and you have to agree with me that chill-axing on a sandy beach with a cold drink, watching the odd Audouin's Gull fly by (along with plenty of birds... wink wink), is probably the best possible way to birdwatch... ever ;-)

Silver-washed Fritillary

Silver-washed Fritillary

The largest Fritillary in Britain, and one which I have never seen before; I was kindly given directions by Frank (The Early Birder) to Bookham Common just a few miles down the road, where the Silver-washed Fritillary will be reaching its peak.

With the weather window we needed, my mum kindly offered to take me to the Common on Monday, and we were greeted by 100s of these striking orange and black streaked butterflies.

They spent most of their time feeding on thistle in the sunny clearings, but were easily disturbed and without a proper macro lens, I used the telescopic; having the advantage of not needing to go too close to get a shot.

The sun was extremely bright, which produced many 'fried' images, but also a few ones that I don't think are too bad.

A side on view...

These guys will be on the wing throughout August so I might give it another shot at them... literally.