A Trip North of the Border

 

There is probably no finer place to be at sunrise than a forest. Any type of forest really but the one I was lucky enough to spend a few days in recently was particularly fine. The central ridge of the Black Isle in the Highlands is covered by a large forest complex managed commercially, as amenity woodland and for wildlife. With good populations of red squirrel and pine marten and rumours of more exciting species, this is where James Moore has his photography site. James and I had worked together on pine martens a couple of years ago in a different part of the forest and I was keen to try the new area where James already had martens coming at night to his squirrel feeders.

  

 I wanted to get images of martens in their rich winter coats and as daylight sightings would be unlikely at this time of year camera traps were the way to go. This left the days free to photograph red squirrels, a subject I have never really tried to do in earnest. In the past I have had a day here and there on them in both England and Ireland with not much to show for it.  So I was very pleased indeed to get a nice set of images and plan to go back for more in the future. I found them tremendous fun and thanks to James'  hard work on the site, I had 5 or 6 squirrels coming and going each morning. As I was just starting out with this species I stuck to fairly standard portrait and environmental type shots but as James develops the site further there will be opportunities for leaping squirrels and reflections.

 James' plan is to develop the site as much for pine martens as squirrels, not necessarily in the same part of the forest, but at the moment both species use the same area at different times. The idea is to try and get martens visiting an area during daylight, last and first light probably, and then to run hide rental/workshops for this rare and normally elusive animal alongside his current squirrel operation.
You can get in touch with James for more information about squirrel and pine marten photography through his website.

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Water Vole Vole Update March 2013

 OK, as mentioned on my FB page yesterday, here is a quick update on the water vole photography situation. About a week ago there were definitely 2 voles resident in close proximity to the house, in the area where we did most of the photography last year. There was also a third which seemed to visit this area later in the day from downstream. However, over the last couple of days I have only seen a single vole which is spending most of its time in the burrow beneath the wall, where several litters have been born in previous years. It does come out to the big wall, where I took these images yesterday but only briefly and it is quite shy. These 2 stills and video were shot remotely with the camera controlled from my iPad whilst I was on the bank. You can see how nervous the vole is in the video. Even the rain scared it off. I would guess that this vole has young now and possibly others in the area also. I still think we will be able to get going in some time in April, particularly if young voles start showing up. There are also voles in a very nice stretch downstream where we have photographed in years past and I am very keen to open this up again. I'm off to Scotland later this week to check out the pine marten situation and as soon as I return I'll spend some time on getting photos from there. So, watch this space…

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Flighty Jays

Ok, as mentioned on my FB page yesterday, here's the video. I wanted to try and show how fast the jays are going when they come in. You might also notice that they close their wings well before landing so it's quite tricky finding just where to pre-focus. Lots and lots of misses.
All the clips in the video are at normal speed except where I have slowed it down to 10% of normal.
The quality isn't the best but the light was pants.

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Sometimes You Eat the Bear

And so the snow came and went, along with the usual self-inflicted pressure to produce something useful from it.  As I was working on foxes anyway, and although I knew it would be difficult to get anything really good in the narrow window that snow in the southeast usually provides, I thought I would stay with them. Non-habituated foxes are difficult anyway at this time of year as all their energy is put into the short breeding season with dogs chasing vixens all over the county. They are never where you expect them to be and when you do find them, they are always in a hurry to be someplace else.

So anyway, that's enough whining and feeble excuses. Needless to say, for several days solid work I got very little indeed. In fact, these three images are about it.

Oh well. As a wiser man than me once said: Sometimes you eat the bear - and sometimes, the bear eats you.

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Water Vole Update

I'm getting quite a few requests for water vole photography so I thought I would post a quick update.  Basically we have put photography on hold until March earliest and possibly early April. I have replied to all the pending requests for availability, prices etc personally and if you are interested it's still worth dropping me an email so I can keep you on file and let you know when we plan to restart. I will also post any news on my FB page and here on the blog.

It looks like we have lost the older vole from by the house and although there are still at least two late 2012 born youngsters living there, they are not providing much in the way of photo opportunities. It's normal for the voles to be more nervous at this time of year and these two dash around like weasels on speed. As soon as we start looking towards some warmer weather I intend to get some work done in the area near the house and plant marginal and aquatic vegetation on the north and west banks which the voles are not currently using. Hopefully this will create a more diverse, richer habitat for the voles and also provide further photo ops for us.

There are voles in several stretches of the stream including lots of fresh sign in the area I replanted a couple of years ago so I'm hoping these currently elusive chaps will start to show better later in the year.    This is a very nice area which gets good light all day. The stream is wide and slow here too, making for nice reflections and swimming shots. In fact, I'm seeing voles in areas where I haven't seen them for several years including the one above which swam across a very misty stream this morning while I was waiting for a fox to cross.

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Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

I guess it's the time one posts one's favourite/most memorable images from the past year. As I have spent the last couple of wet and windy days archiving old photos I thought I would  take my navel-gazing to another level and go back a bit further. I'm not sure just how old these photos are. I could find out by digging out old notebooks but I can't be bothered. I'm pretty sure they are either 15 or 16 years old.  I remember that I had gone from summer in Canada to Asia, on to Australia and back to Canada where the very nice Immigration Officer said he thought I was flag-poling and he took a dim view of such things and suggested I might like to emigrate there. He then gave me an application form and another 6 month visa.

These photos of nectar-feeding rainbow lorikeets were taken from a second-floor office at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. A friend was working there at the time and we had to try several offices and labs to find one that lined up with the tree. No one seemed to mind. I really liked Australia. And Velvia.

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Nikon D4 Remote Video

One of the things about the Nikon D4 that interested me most was the ability to operate video remotely.  These two short clips were shot with the camera in the stream, just above water level and I was sat on the bank some distance away. The camera was triggered with my usual radio remote. I was initially concerned that I would have to set up the camera with live view already on. This meant that with the cold conditions plus a long wait the battery might run down quickly. It was a nice surprise to find that the camera could be left with live view off and a half-press on the transmitter would turn it on, and then a full press to start and stop video. Once on though, live view can't be turned off.  However, with the WT5 wireless transmitter, most camera functions, still and video, can be controlled remotely by an iPhone or iPad or a laptop running Nikon Camera Control. This is very exciting.

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