Brave - Fox and gulls

Brave

Last winter we were ringing gulls at Pitsea landfill using cannon nets, organised by North Thames Gull Group.
 The leader of the session let me have my camera at the front of the cannons, giving me an opportunity to sharpen my lenses on the moment when the cannons had been fired but the net is still in the air over the camera, closing down on the birds. Whoever has been on the session knows that there are frustrating times before firing the cannons as the guy on the button has to make sure that there are no birds in the air in the range of the cannons. The right moment does not come too often when you have up to a thousand gulls to watch out for. The operator was about to fire when a fox carelessly, and from our point of view quite bravely, walked in the front of the cannons chasing up all the gulls into the air and luckily for me had found something to eat right at the front of the camera. The next minute I learned that one man actually can swear louder than a thousand gulls can caw. After the fox ate whatever it'd found we had to wait an extra hour before firing. I was not quick enough to take the picture I was originally aiming for but I got this one instead.

 The picture did well in the BTO's 'Bird photographer of the year' competition in 2017.

 Paul R. if you read this; Thank you for the opportunity.

Gab


Red fox (Vulpes vulpes)   various gulls

Canon eos600d canon EF-S10-22mm f3.5-4.5 at 10mm  1/125sec  f6.3  ISO100 remote release, flash

Those short summer nights...

Those short summer nights

 A few years back I had found a Tawny owl's nest in a busy park in North London.
Owls are normally active at night but adults with such a big chicks work around the clock as summer nights alone are not long enough to get all the food their chicks need.
I still chose night over day for this 'project' thinking a picture taken in the dark would look better and hoping that the park would be less manic at night.
I set up a hide far away enough not to disturb the nest, put my camera on a tripod and I was waiting with one end of a remote shutter release in my hand.
Owls are silent fliers, you do not get much notice before they appear right at the front of you so I also had to use a little torch to be able to see the right moment when one of the adults returned and hopefully take a shot before it disappeared into its nest.
As hours passed I started to wonder if they were ever going to return to the nest or had they somehow noticed me and wanted me to leave first?
I also wondered about how vulnerable I was sitting there alone in the dark with some park gangs having a verbal fight on a path not far behind me.
All I could do was hope that those strangers would not pick up the light spreading from my torch and come and say they want 'their' camera back. I think there and then the only thing that kept me in the hide was the fact that I was afraid to move.

Since then I know that nights even in June can be bloody long sometimes......

I missed the right  moment many times before I took this single image towards the end of the third night.

Gab


Tawny owl (Strix aluco)      Wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus)

Canon eos600d      Canon24-105mmf/4 II USM  at55mm   1/25sec f7.1  ISO200,

Peregrine

                                                   

 4 years on the waiting......

Some sort of miracle (for me anyway) happened last week: I've managed to take a portrait of one the peregrines in Aylesbury.
I've been trying for about four years to take (any) photos of the nesting pair from the county hall with rather disappointing results: the pictures were either distant shots so the birds were microscopic or the whole thing ended up blurry.
Last week I was out shooting something else and after I've finished I jumped into the car, put my camera on the passenger seat and I went to pick up my misses from the Friars Square car park. As I waited, the female peregrine landed on the railing only around 12-15m away from me.
Grabbed my camera, quick set, hand held, took one shot.
Now, everything sounds very simple, but before you say so stop for a minute and think about how many times it will happen in the next thousand years that a peregrine land next to someone in a car park AND there is a camera there with a decent lens on AND the bird will wait for you to take the shot?!

5 seconds later she was gone leaving me with this wonderful image....

If you look closely you can see a little knob in the middle of her nostril, it is there to brake the incoming air so the bird can breathe at high speed.

canon eos600d, canon100-400mm f4.5-5.6      1/125sec, f 5.6, ISO 200


Gab