Working for Peanuts

We get our share or wildlife foraging around our garden most evenings but last night we picked up on a couple of large Badgers foraging along one of our Cornish walls and drinking from our pond.

They were the first Badgers that we had seen in the garden for a couple of years so today my wife came home with a pot of peanut butter to treat them should they return again tonight,

To make things a little more interesting to watch I smeared the peanut butter onto a couple or logs and placed them butter downward facing on the wall together to see how long it took the badgers to find and access the treat,

First in was a fox cub that cleared a few loose peanuts,  It could also smell the peanut butter but did not seem to have the humph to turn the logs to access it.

As you can see by the images posted here the badger was a different story.   The first one in just after fox had cleared up the peanuts was straight on to the treat and it very quickly demonstrated its powerful log rolling skills on camera

And after working hard at turning the sticky logs over using its nose and powerful talons until they were treat-side up,  Here is our Badger very much enjoying the fruits of its labour even if it seemed to be it was a bit like :
                                                             
                                                        Working for Peanuts !!

Skye Pine Marten

The Scottish Pine Marten was in on our hit list of the top four wildlife subjects that we hoped to see on Skye and come the last of our four day shoot it was the only one left outstanding so Stewart Dawber arranged for us to try our luck at a known feeding station,

We went to the site early to check out the lighting conditions and come up with a working plan that would produce some results for us in the darkness without disturb the Pine Marten,  Two and a half hours and a lot of head scratching later we finally had a plan of action in place as darkness closed in over the site.

The Pine marten turned up within the hour giving us the benefit of two visits to the site and a few final portrait shots taken hand held at less than a metre from our 'hide' with the camera to subject distance determined by the Marten.

With the Pine Marten finally in the can we crawled into our beds at around midnight with a fourteen hour return trip home ahead of us at 6 AM the next morning !   So was it all worth it?   You bet your life it was !

So if you fancy a look at the wonderful wildlife side of Skye and want to make the most of its photo opportunities then do yourself a favour and give Stewart a call at Skyehigh wildlife tours on 01471 855643

Skye Eagles in Aerial Dispute

Both Golden Eagle and Sea Eagles were high on our hit list for this short visit to Skye and we were delighted to see an aerial territorial dispute between these two birds while working with Stewart Dawber on our first afternoon on Skye

We were hunkered down on a mountain slope that was the known territory of a pair of Golden Eagles but none had been sighted when a juvenile Sea Eagle glided into the territory quite low over some near tree tops and then it treated us to some fine aerial loops around the surrounding glen as it moved in our direction.

As I snapped away taking perhaps a hundred or more rapid fire exposures thinking that things could not get much better than this,  They Did !!    As out from its hiding place in a group of trees on the opposite side of the glen appeared a fine female Golden Eagle.

She immediately headed in the direction of the Sea Eagle and was intent on expelling it from her territory while creating for me the opportunity of framing both birds as they passed close together several times to create this blogs header image.

 Unfortunately both birds moved away from us as the Golden Eagle chased the Sea Eagle from its patch but by then I was already reviewing the results in my camera monitor and I was:                                                                                           
                                                                      A Happy Chappy !!

Skye Common Seals and Coastal Birds.

We joined a boat trip out from Portree to watch and photograph the Sea Eagles taking fish offerings from the boat between Portree and the island of Raasay.

This proved to be disappointing and I was not impressed with the boat layout or her crews performance in their lack of effort to tempt the adult Sea Eagles into taking fish to feed a juvenile eagle that was present and screaming to be fed.

Our consolation prize came by way of a group of perhaps a dozen very photogenic and relaxed Common Seals that were obviously well used to posing for the passing boats.

Earlier in the morning while waiting for the first boat trip to leave I worked on a Cormorant that was fishing in the calm harbour water which produced an interesting surface dive composition and an incoming Grey Heron made a very close fly-by across the Jetty

The above image of the hungry juvenile Sea Eagle was as good as it got for Sea Eagle photography on this boat trip and this would have been even more disappointing had I not had a very nice inland Sea Eagle encounter while working with Stewart Dawber the previous day

Skye Red Deer

 Our Red deer sightings tended to come along as by-the-way encounters as we travelled through the mountains on single track roads on the lookout for Golden Eagles in their known territories

Most were of single or small groups of doe with this years young in tow,  No encounters with the 'Monarch of the Glen' but we did see the occasional young stag on the hillside,

With Red Deer being a rare sighting to us down here in West Cornwall these frequent encounters were very welcome !!

Skye Otter

Otter were high on our hit list on this our first visit to Skye and we put in around twelve hours of our precious time to gain a couple of encounters with this elusive mammal feeding along the shoreline of a loch at the southeast end of the island.

We were four to five hours in before our first encounter but it was well worth waiting for as we watched this female Otter feed on crabs and flatfish for half an hour until she suddenly just vanished like only Otter can.

With careful field skill learnt from our first encounter and a bit of luck on our second visit we eventually got within ten metres of the above female Otter that was concentrating on filling her face with a juicy flatfish.

Skye Hooded Crows and Buzzard

Hooded Crow and Buzzard are common throughout the Isle of Skye and the shot above was typical of the crow harassing the Buzzard at every opportunity,

The Hooded Crow is a striking looking bird especially in flight and can often be approached quite closely for portrait images.

Not so the buzzard which will part company with you the moment that it thinks you are interested so you just have to be ready to capture a good take-off sequence when you turn your camera in its direction.

My next blog will be all about the Highland Red Deer !!