2022 Favourites
It is now time to show my favourite photos from last year which turned out to be a pretty good year photographically – so good that instead of the top ten there are twelve in the gallery as I did not know which two to discard! Three visits to Islay produced Red Deer stags, a […]
Hide And Seek
A happy new year to all our readers with this weeks blog photo of one of my hides in a neighbours garden last month.This is what a proper hide should look like and I always have a good laugh at the hides that some of our television experts use – they would blow away in […]
Christmas Berries
Last weeks sub zero temperatures and sunshine were perfect conditions for filming Fieldfares – if you could find any! A Hawthorne bush in a neighbours garden was full of large red berries and out of the blue three Fieldfares descended to gobble them up. I had a memorable two days filming these and some other […]
Jack Snipe 180
There is no doubt that the most illusive winter visitor to the Pennines is the Jack Snipe. Most people will never see one but I like the ultimate challenge. In the last two winters I have encountered 179 – all have flown off at close quarters and have provided me with no photos. All that […]
The Disappearing Green Belt
I took this weeks landscape photo early one morning this last summer as I sat waiting for a Long Eared Owl to hunt.It seemed to me to illustrate what is now happening to our open countryside – one last refuge for the horses as the industrial sprawl encroaches all around! Next to where I was […]
Redwing At Dawn
Once again it looks like its going to be another winter with very few berries and even less Redwings. At dawn on Monday I found four Redwings, along the canal, finishing off the few Hawthorne berries that were left.It was the only day this last week when the sun appeared and their colours were transformed […]
Summer Nights
For three months last summer I spent time in the hills filming three different hunting male Long Eared Owls. They were memorable nights and I took hundreds of photos so lets have a look at some of the also rans. The blog photo is interesting in that the eyes look yellow and not orange as […]
Goosander Dawn
The exciting thing about wildlife photography is that you never know what subject will present itself to you. One morning last week I set out before sunrise to try and find a local Kingfisher. As I reached the canal out in the middle was a male Goosander. It was only there a few seconds, there […]
Reservoir Success
Following on from last weeks blog on moorland reservoirs this week we highlight one of its success stories. The Little Ringed Plover is one of our rarest breeding birds and I have to obtain a special Permit to go anywhere near their nest. Four eggs are laid on the gravel bed of a moorland reservoir […]
Moorland Reservoirs
This weeks photo is of Watergrove reservoir which is typical of the dozens of reservoirs that I have filmed at over the last fifty years. In the early years you would never find Great Crested Grebes breeding at the reservoir but all that has changed. They are just as happy now to anchor their nest […]