Squirrel Time

Just come back from the Lake district with some nice shots of wild Red Squirrel. Had to use my old camera as my normal one developed a loose strap lug. First Nikon fault in 40 years!! It took them 13 days over Easter to get it back to me - well done Nikon!

One Flash Good, Two Can be Better

I've been experimenting with flight shots this winter and as the light is so poor I've used balanced fill-flash to improve things. This shot used a Nikon D3 with 600mm f4 lens and two Nikon SB800's with the main flash to the Left of the bird and the fill flash on the camera. Getting the right balance of flash to background light was interesting and seems to have worked. Photographing birds in flight is not easy. Wait untill the Swifts arrive!!!

Let There be Flight

At last the light is picking up, 2 whole stops better for photography than in December. Nice to be able to get a few flight shots at long last.

All the birds are in new plumage and beginning to display and sort out their territories. The Robins are battling it out, this time for feeding rights on the peanut butter and other food I and another two photographers have been leaving for them all winter.

Here's a nice flight shot of one of the tough guys. Taken with fill-flash to lift the shadows. Had to use a high ISO of 1600 and a shutter speed 1/3200s to freeze the wings. Luckily, my Nikon flash will synchronise with the shutter up to 1/8000s instead of the usual 1/250s of other makes which helps with fill-flash at high speeds.

Birstall Beauties

Couldn't resist going to look at the 60 Waxwings invading the industrial estate at Birstall in Bradford. I just love looking at these graceful birds. They were feeding on a variety of Mountain Ash called 'Pink Pagoda'. Some landscaper had luckily decided to plant them when building offices.

The birds were quite wary and didn't seem to like white vans for some reason (who does)! Fancy coming all the way from Scandinavia for the second year to eat berries at the Mars Petfood factory near Ikea!!!

Waxwing Wunderland

These Scandinavian beauties descended on apple trees and had a whale of a time just south of Wakefield.

They would eat 5 or 6 berries and then retire to the top of a tree to digest them. Hard work getting good pics of them with all the twigs about but we got there in the end.

Driven to Art

Found myself driven to do a watercolour sketch of Waxwings that were being unco-operative for the camera. At least the telescope allows a much closer view. These were in a tree today at Cold Hiendley near Wakefield. They then dropped into a garden to feed on apples.