Xmas Lunch
On Christmas eve, flying against the back-drop of Manchester flats, my local Barn Owl is carrying its lunch back to the barn to devour. This was its second attempt as 30 minutes before this it had been dispossessed of its vole by the local Kestrel! Not every pair of Barn Owls hunt during the […]
Waxwings Are On Their Way
If there is one bird species that excites bird-watchers it is the Waxwing. None came to us last winter as there was an abundance of berries in Scandinavia so they stayed over there, but this winter the situation is different. At present there are hundreds of Waxwings in Scotland eating their way south . This […]
Acrobatic Goldfinches
The long hot summer has produced an abundance of thistles which have been an absolute bonus for our Goldfinches. During the many hours that I have been waiting for Long and Short-Eared Owls to appear the charms of Goldfinches have kept me entertained with their acrobatics as in this weeks blog photo. click here All […]
To Intervene Or Not To Intervene?
Much has been said in recent weeks about the BBC cameraman’s declared policy of not intervening in any wildlife event that they are filming. That rule was broken last week when Emperor Penguins were helped out of a glacier to enable them to return to their rookery. Death would have followed if the cameramen had […]
The Dive
I have always maintained that in wildlife photography your results are directly proportionate to the time that you put in and last week I had a perfect example of this with my local Barn Owl. I spent days watching the hunting pattern of this bird and noted that it started to hunt around a field […]
Goose Feast
As predicted the first International Goose count on Islay last week has produced a lower than expected count of just over 30,000 birds. The reason for this lower number is that very few juvenile birds have returned with the adult Geese due entirely to a devastating Spring blizzard in eastern Greenland. It was already known […]
Whooper Swan Spectacular
There is one bonus of wild weather on Islay in Autumn, you may be treated to a spectacular sunset at dusk. That is exactly what happened on our recent visit – six days of stormy weather then two sunny days that produced incredible colours at sunset. Add to that thousands of roosting Geese then a […]
Hibernation Time
For the last couple of weeks the Hedgehog in this weeks photo has been visiting our garden later and later each evening. It finally got to 10.00pm before the food was left overnight and it must now be curled ups in a bed of leaves until next Spring. Lets hope that we don’t have any […]
Trick Or Treat
The 31st October is a special day and I don’t think I have ever taken any photos on that day before. The weather was perfect but the subject matter extremely wary. In two hours under the camouflage cloth I only managed a couple of photos, one of which is this weeks blog photo. In the […]
Seaside Geese
On one of those superb recent Autumn days I visited the coast at Southport to look for Waders. Not a wader in sight but Geese were everywhere including one group of 14,000 Pink Footed Geese! Grey Lags and Canadas were also feeding in the salt-marsh and the best bird seen was a distant hunting Peregrine […]