News

Now that autumn is well and truly here, there is no more growth in the trees and hedges, fruit if not picked is falling and the ground in places is littered with Beech mast, acorns, Sweet Chestnuts and ‘conkers’. Wintering thrushes from the north such as Fieldfares and Redwings are starting to appear and their numbers will increase over the next weeks and as in a previous blog post Ring Ouzels are also coming in.
Long Tailed Tits will start to roam in small flocks foraging for food, peanuts in the garden will always attract these lovely little birds. Goldfinches will also gather into flocks in the coming weeks, sunflower seeds being their favourite. Later in the year, in winter, Siskins will visit gardens in search of food, Niger seeds are very attractive for them.
Make your own bird food cheaply with lard/suet mixed with cheap cake from the supermarket and a few mixed seeds and fruit rolled in and put in a mold, even a plastic margarine tub will do – birds love this mixture.

Watch out for birds, particularly Jays.



Burying hazlenuts and acorns ready to be dug up later when food is scarce.

Leave fallen fruit like apples for Blackbirds to eat, avoid overly cutting back Ivy, it’s a great source of food for birds in the winter.
If you find snails throw them onto open grassy areas for Song Thrushes to eat it’s one of their favourite foods.
Don’t forget our little Robins, a handful of seeds or dried mealworms in winter near to the house will have them virtually eating out of your hand.
Other birds from the north may come in, possibly Great Grey Shrike this winter, after a barren couple of years in this area. Wintering wildfowl will seek out bodies of water like Llangors Lake. Some year’s large flocks of migrating Brambling will roam around looking for food like Beech mast, sometimes in their hundreds, even appearing in the garden associating with Chaffinches.
The secretive Woodcock and Jack Snipe come in October, both difficult birds to find, usually flushed from underfoot when walking in damp areas.
It’s time to embrace the changing seasons, as the clocks go back it’s not a time for withdrawing to the fireside, there’s lots of wildlife to see……

Around the first week of October the north / south passage of Ring Ouzels starts to appear in the Brecon Beacons area and birds can possibly be seen where there are berry trees, (Rowan in the main), usually growing on local hills. I love these gorgeous but frustratingly enigmatic birds, I say this because they are very shy and difficult to approach.
In the spring is the most difficult time to photograph them, this is because they breed, although unfortunately very sporadically now, high up on remote and elevated hill-sides. These days they must be left alone at this time to avoid disturbance to their breeding, because as I have outlined previously they are in steep decline as a breeding bird in the UK.
However, on passage in the autumn on their journey to southern Spain and North Africa to their wintering grounds they actively seek out berry laden trees to sustain them on their way. Rowan appears to be their favourite berry tree, so a birder/photographer must seek out these trees in order to find these birds.



Ouzels will almost always be in upland areas resting on rocky hill-sides where they come down from time to time to feed on these berries.
This southerly passage can last for up to six weeks and I have seen and photographed these birds some years from mid-October right up to late November. Undoubtedly patience is needed in these photographic endeavours because otherwise you will not get anywhere near a Ring Ouzel, staying in your vehicle or remaining under cover is essential.

I love the beautiful silver fringing to their feathers.



That broad snow-white crescent on the males breast and that soft ‘chuuk chuuk’ call.

What’s not to like about them?

I have started to set up my feeding station in my garden, a little early perhaps but I want to get the birds used to feeding there. There is some nice fruit around in my garden at the moment in particular an ornamental apple tree which has a fantastic blossom every spring and a huge crop of fruit in the autumn – now!
In my little wildlife garden I have been busy erecting an elevated platform with a natural wooden frame around it filled with whatever I can find – fallen leaves, conkers, chestnut husks, cones and acorns because I want to try and get some natural photos of birds foraging for food as well as perched shots.
However, I saw an opportunity yesterday to get a perched shot, and I cut a very small branch off this ornamental apple tree and held it in a clamp fixed to the elevated platform just above the feeding area. The birds are starting to get used to feeding among the fallen leaves etc. but it will take time to totally wean them off the usual perches.
I have some shots of the birds amongst the litter but I have to keep arranging things in an effort to make the images look natural, which they are really, just elevated instead of on the floor.

There are also some unintentionally comical shots from time to time.



The background behind this platform is dark because it looks into the depths of the small wood that is situated behind it and I have thinned the foliage out removing hanging ivy and growing nettles that tend to accumulate over the summer. There is plenty of other ivy in this area for the wildlife to feed on anyway.
There is a small flock of Long Tailed Tits coming to the garden in the last few days and they are expressing an interest in the food I have provided. With this in mind I set up my gear in my permanent photo hide and waited …………

After quite some time the Long Tailed Tits came in and flitted around the area until one finally landed on my apple perch. The sun was shining brightly onto this perch illuminating the ornamental apples and it made quite a photogenic scene with the dark background accentuating the subjects.



A few hours wait for one decent image but that’s bird photography!

As a follow up to my previous blog I have decided to upload video footage of the Osprey nest platform in the Brecon Beacons. After a huge response to the above mentioned blog with well over a thousand people viewing the post, everybody in the area now obviously knows about this great news. I shot this video footage from distance under the cover of an overhanging Willow tree. Full permission to film was obtained from the relevant people and no disturbance whatsoever was made to the birds.
This was a real ‘Buzz’ and a red letter day for me to see these magnificent birds in our valley and building a nest.

A video link is below.

https://youtu.be/hejVROFT1CU

A couple of weeks ago I was approached by the county bird recorder for Breconshire to try and get some images of a pair of Ospreys that were building a nesting platform near to where I live in the Usk Valley. This was no easy task because of the sensitivity involved, (not only because of the bird’s welfare, which is paramount), but because of a local dispute with the Welsh government over the land usage in the area. After agreement with the various parties involved and after assessing the best viewing spot for photographing these sensitive birds without disturbing them I set up and waited. Much later after a long five hour wait I was very pleased to get some images. They are not the best quality stills, but that wasn’t the point, the most important thing was getting the first and only images of nesting ospreys in South Wales for a couple of hundred years!!



I also obtained extensive video footage of the birds calling to each other and nest arranging, but this video footage will be held back by me until an appropriate time is decided.
A real red letter day for the local birding community and also for me personally.

In north Norfolk there was an old and almost derelict little bird hide in the area of marsh land we liked to visit and where I had the really good fortune to photograph the Juv male Hen Harrier shown in a previous blog post. We liked it there, especially on a late afternoon because anything could and indeed did turn up. One grey and overcast afternoon as the light was fading, we were just sat there - it had been quite an uneventful couple of hours when totally out of the blue a female Marsh Harrier appeared from nowhere with wings spread and talon showing.

This is probably the last thing prey sees before it's all over!



I fired off a quick burst hoping for something before she quite remarkably landed on top of a Hawthorn hedge right opposite the hide.



This is the type of encounter that used to happen and why we spent time there.

Well worth the wait on a grey day………

Lesvos, Spring 2023 now avaiable in the Trip Report section.

Blast from the past.

While I was out one autumn evening in some North Norfolk coastal fields looking for Short Eared Owls.



A most memorable encounter occured. I was sat hidden behind an old wooden enclosure when suddenly a beautiful Juvenile male Hen Harrier appeared, literally out of nowhere, and amazingly hunted very close to me for a few brief moments, allowing me some rare close up shots before quickly disappearing - there and gone in seconds.......

Bullfinches are my favourite hedgerow birds. They are monogamous, gentle and really beautiful - what's not to like about them? I love the male's song, it appears to consist of chords rather than notes and it is so delicate and always just on the edge of your hearing. Sometimes you question what you are hearing and then you realise it's a male Bullfinch singing. They are in my garden all year round and they breed some years, deep in cover in the Hazel hedges, but they rarely show right out in the open for me to photoghraph.
Today I spent an hour down in my little nature reserve just watching if anything was coming in to drink in my elevated pond in this humid weather. Very briefly both male and female Bullfinches came in for a quick drink and then disappeared - it's what they usually do, so no surprise!
I was going to call it a day becaus it's so uncomfortably hot in my wooden hide when suddenly out of nowhere a male Bullfinch landed right on one of my perches for about ten seconds. In my garden this is really unusual behaviour, they just don't do it, but I wasn't complaining - it was lovely to see him out in the open for once.

Notice the conspicuous white rump patch which always shows very prominently on male and female when they fly - always a good way to identify Bullfinches.

Between two particular conifer plantations in the Brecon Beacons there is an area of 'Clearfell'. (Nothing unusual in that I hear you say) but right in the middle of this clearfell there was one old rotten tree trunk about twenty feet high and it stood out like a sore thumb amongst the fallen branches. A number of times I witnessed Cuckoos flying from one plantation to the other and perching on this tree trunk to survey the area. I started to see an opportunity for an image in this situation, so a couple of years ago I manhandled a few of the fallen branches to form a kind of 'Teepee' which would act as a natural hide. This construction was about thirty feet from the tree trunk the Cuckoos were perching on. At first light one morning I positioned myself inside the Teepee and waited, for some time I must admit, for a Cuckoo to start calling. After much anticipation a male bird came in and landed right in front of me and this happened a number of times providing me with some quite decent images.
This old tree stump was the basis for some nice photographic images of these iconic spring birds because they were always close up and the background was always a nice pastal shade.



Last week I was driving past these two conifer plantations and I thought I'd stop and have a look to see if 'old faithful' was still standing. However, what greeted me was disappointment, it was lying flat on the clearfell floor amongst the other debris. I was thinking of setting up there next spring (because it's too late this year) if there were any Cuckoos around the plantations, but it would be far too heavy to re-erect.
All good things come to an end they say.....

When you see a Woodchat Shrike in the UK it's a nice find, not a huge deal but still worth going to see for bird listers. However, all the shrikes usually seen in the UK, (except for some very isolated breeding of Red Backed for instance which is kept 'Quiet' for obvious reasons) are single birds. On Lesvos it is still usually single birds that are photographed, although they obviously breed in numbers there. We came across a pair as I mentioned in a previous blog when the female bird was quite confiding when she was out looking for food, allowing me to approach her quite closely. After this very nice encounter we carried on walking but on our return past their obvious nesting area, which we did not stop at to avoid disturbance, there was no sign of them. However, further on we could now see both male and female in a tree down the track. They were just contendedly perched next to each other totally ignoring our presence as we approached. I took a few shots from a distance which I thought the birds were comfortable with and we skirted around past them as they remained there just watching us walking past. A quite unusual situation to find two very nice quality birds posing nicely for a photograph - I wasn't complaining!

I haven't had time to look for Cuckoos this spring and I don't think I'll be able to either. However, a chance encounter happened this week when we went out for a drive in between working at home. A cuckoo called and flew past us when we were parked up having a cup of coffee. I had my go to lens with me in the boot, I don't have to say what it is now after all the previous blog posts, and I quickly took a few images as the Cuckoo was there and gone in seconds.
I never thought I'd be leaving my 600 prime lens at home on a regular basis but that is the norm now, but I fully understand why I'm doing it when I can casually capture reasonably good images without it.

A bird we didn't expect to see perched in a tree was a Purple Heron, they are usually, for us anyway, skulking aroud a reed bed being quite elusive. One morning, however, we were out early to see what was on the local river before returning to to the hotel for breakfast. We rounded a corner and there was a Purple Heron sunbathing in the early morning sun, obviously warming up after a cold night in the reed beds.

A total but very welcome surprise!

Hoopoes are very frustrating birds for the photographer in many respects, they are usually seen on the ground digging around in not the best positions or alternatively flying away from you. They rarely pose nicely – but sometimes there’s an exception to the rule. As we were driving along a dusty track a large bird flew up off the ground in front of us and we could see it was a Hoopoe. We expected it to fly off into the distance as usual but it didn’t, it perched in a tree about ten yards away and even better it was nicely framed by the surrounding foliage. I stopped the car and carefully placed my lens on a beanbag I always keep ready. I took a couple of shots before it inevitably wheeled away, but on the back of the camera I could see I had just caught it in the frame.

A total slice of luck out of the blue!

A bird that is seen very infrequently anywhere really is the Barred Warbler, especially the adult males. On Lesvos this is no exception and it was very nice to catch one flitting around some trees early one morning. They are so elusive, keeping to deep cover and only giving brief and tantalising views. This bird showed very fleetingly and it’s not the best shot, but it was still nice to get a record.

Black Headed Buntings arrive on Lesvos at the end of April in numbers. These birds although quite common are in the right light quite stunning. They perch in prominent positions and sing all day and if you can get the right side of them with the sun behind you they are glorious.

I always like to try and get a shot of a Wood Warbler in the spring. They are one of my favourite little warblers. They live up to their name by breeding in the light mixed woodlands of the Brecon Beacons. They like an airy canopy and a bit of space between the trees to fly around and display. I love their spinning coin song and their multiple sharp little 'Peeps' when they call. This morning I was in such a woodland early and I was watching a bird calling and singing and displaying frequently. I positioned myself behing some foliage and watched and waited for an opportunity to try and get a shot. I was again using my Canon R5 with my Canon RF 100-500 f7.1 lens and a Canon speedlight 430EX mounted on the hot shoe for a bit of fill in flash. I couldn't have walked in these type of woods with my EF600 f4 and tripod, it's just too big and awkward. This little Canon RF 100-500 is so versatile for this type of shooting.
A lovely morning with this glorious little bird.

For some reason a male Yellowhammer has been coming to my garden for three years and singing all day long. I'm not complaining because they are such a lovely bird that used to be common on farmland but unfortunately no longer.

Long Eared Owls are very difficult to see well in the UK, they are quite strictly nocturnal and spend their days roosting in dense copses out of sight.



Their only give away is the adult’s deep and far carrying hoot – like a mini foghorn. The young in the spring utter a call akin to a squeaky gate hinge, other than this they are ostensibly unobtrusive.



In Lesvos they roost and breed, often in Corsican pines and frequently in the middle of towns. This is the best place to see them and it’s just a matter of closely scanning the branches for roosting birds.
We came across two adults and two chicks in one such location near to our hotel and we were very lucky to see the adults out hunting in the dark because they were passing street lights regularly on their way back and fore to feeding the youngsters.



However, one afternoon one of the chicks got a little too confident and fell out of the roosting tree which was a big problem because there are quite a few feral cats around Lesvos towns and they were obviously a great danger to this young bird.
Fortunately there was a Dutch bird ringer around and he caught the young owl.



And another birder got hold of a long ladder and reinstated the bird back up from where it had fallen.
All’s well that ended well – in that situation anyway.

Susan and I have just returned from a couple of weeks on the Greek island of Lesvos - yesterday. It's a bit of a shock from having warm sunny days with Bee eaters trilling above you and Black Storks drifting past your hotel balcony to this grey and miserable weather we have here - I hope it improves soon. Blog posts will follow and a full trip report will appear in due course.