Kennell Vale Dipper

Kennell Vale is a beautiful wooded valley with the River Kennell's white waters cutting and tumbling down through it passing many old and derelict Gunpowder mills along its banks,  Geographically it is protected from most wind directions and the sunlight filtering through the woods yesterday created a lovely spectacle.

I had returned hoping to capture display and possibly mating images of the rivers pair of Dipper,

After an hour or so of waiting at one of their favoured fishing locations with no show I moved off down stream and eventually found one of them working a different swim and it was very successful in catching several Nymphs in the shallows by head dipping without having to dive under the water,

With lunch taken care of it settled down to some relaxed preening on the waters edge but their was no sign of its mate

Other birds photographed at Kennell vale while waiting for the Dipper included the Nuthatch, Grey wagtail and Gold crest posted below :

Tehidy Gold Rush

Rushing from tree to tree at Tehidy wildlife park yesterday this agile lightweight Goldcrest
( Europe's smallest bird ) was busy extracting insects, eggs and grubs from the underside of the few leaves remaining on the birch and willow trees,

This bird appeared to be almost neckless which tends to further compact its tiny form, It was in a race to extract insect life from every tree leaf before they fell and it was certainly living in the fast lane and a tease to extract clear images from.

I was working with a 500mm lens fitted with a 1.7 Tele-converter fitted which helped composition relating to the small size of the bird but its fast movements made my narrow field of view a bitch to track and compose my composition and the poor overcast light levels were difficult for shutter speed and ISO control with my settings ending up on minimum F6.7,  1/1000th sec and ISO 6400.

Such was the level of its commitment that this busy little guy seemed oblivious to me or all else that was going on around it as it worked its way towards me and suddenly at its closest point as fast as it had arrived it was gone again but not before I had extracted:    'A little Gold '

Close portraits of small birds

Wildlife photography has its share of challenges and when it comes to taking close portraits of small birds they will drive you crazy as they always seem to move on just as you get a clear view focused but before you can the shot !    My approach is to work from a reasonable distance without chasing after the subject using a 500mm  F4 lens and a 1.7 converter to achieve a focal length of 850 mm which will work down to a minimum focal distance of 3.5m, This will record the likes of the Blue Tits below full frame,  With a heavy camera and lens I do not consider hand holding for anything more than an ID shot,  I always work from a tripod with a gimble head that allows freedom of movement, critical composition and point of focus while taking the weight of the equipment for the duration of time that any one small bird might present itself at a close enough distance for a successful portrait,  I often find by being static that many birds will keep on moving towards me rather than chasing tails while on the move, sometimes they even end up closer than the minimum focal range but this should not matter for they do as you will already have had the opportunity to take your full frame image before they move out of focal range.

Time well spent

Peter Tonkin and I spent four hours waiting for potential Sparrowhawk images at Stithians yesterday, The time was well spent working on a host of other interesting resident birds from a  large Juvenille Grey heron down to the smallest of Goldcrest,  All of these birds posted below came with their own set of challenges which absorbed our time during what proved to be worthwhile wait for a Sparrowhawk sighting,

Check out the previous blog for our Sparrowhawk encounter  !!!

Bird take-offs

One of the challenges of bird photography after finding them and getting close enough for a reasonable image is attempting to capture behaviour action, one which I find very challenging is picking the moment that a bird takes-off throwing itself into the air to be gone in a flash.  Birds of Prey can be quite easy to predict as they tend to go through a sequence of wing stretches and bowl movements prior to final moment of flying,  but trying to catch a bullfinch departing from a seed head that it has been foraging on for perhaps fifteen is another matter,  It gives no indication when one seed head is empty as it suddenly flies away to find another,  The montage image below worked for me when this male Bullfinch produced a fairly slow wing assisted hop onto another close seed head and I used just two out of the four images exposed during the short movement to create a very close composition.

Being quite a large bird you might expect a Greater-spotted Woodpecker to produce a slower response but think again, its spontaneous take-off is lightening fast and its choice of direction unpredictable so it really comes down to spending lots of time photographing them and you might eventually  Get Lucky !!   When people tell me that I was lucky to take a particular shot,  I reply, "Yes I usually find that the more time and effort that I put in the luckier I get !!



Lapwing are often prone to sudden departures and a whole flock of birds that might have been relaxing on a water margin for several hours will all take off in a matter of a fraction of a second with out any apparent reason for departing only to return to the same spot a few minutes later,

Then there is the ever illusive and constantly moving Goldcrest that can drive you crazy trying to capture a clear portrait image but strangely enough when it comes to take-off shots they can be easier to achieve in as much as they are forever doing just that.  What you need apart from the bird in the right position is a camera that will knock out ten or more Raw images a second,   Keep your finger pressed down on the shutter release as they move and produce a post production montage from the resulting sequence,  You would think it would be easy but just trying to capture three Clear and sharp Goldcrest sequenced images will show you otherwise.

All images taken on a lovely morning at Stithians Southern cut-off today.

Tehidy birds

It was a fine day here in Cornwall yesterday and I went back to Tehidy Country Park in the company of Peter Tonkin and Bob Sharples,  [ There is always a down side ! ]  We were all looking for portraits of fishing Kingfisher but it was not to be,  We had some good entertainment and images provided by other local birds which included a Gold Crest,  Four lovely Jay, A feisty little Wren that was fishing for fresh water shrimp, A black headed gull in winter colours that wanted the pond all to itself, The pair of resident Moorhen that were busy preening each other, A grey wagtail paid us a short visit, The ever present Mallard and finally it seemed like the rarely present Kingfisher that moved on a lot quicker than it arrived leaving me with just one exit flight shot and thoughts that it didn't like the current 50% cover of duckweed on the pond that was obviously making fishing a lot trickier than other ponds in the area.