Short-eared Owl

I spent yesterday on the Dee Estuary visiting a couple of my favourite locations.
Starting the day at Parkgate hoping to see Short-eared Owls hunting, I was greeted on arrival by 3 Owls, but unfortunately they were at a distance and in poor light.

Next I spent 4 hours or so at Burton Mere RSPB trying to capture Bearded Tits.
Again I saw the birds but they didn't really show at the front of the reed beds, preferring to stay tantalizingly a few feet inwards.

The highlight of the day at Burton was the first ever recorded sighting of a White Stork on the reserve and the buzz around the place was electric!
I saw the bird from a great distance on two occasions and on the second it was being mobbed by around 20+ Gulls.
I did get a few record shots, but even at a 100% crop the Stork is tiny in the frame so I won't bother sharing.
Apparently the White Stork was sighted again on site, but of course its anyone's guess to how long it hangs around.

Finally after the excitement of Burton Mere, I returned to Parkgate in hope of another crack at the Short-eared Owls.
By this time it was around 3pm and after an half hour wait a Owl arrived on the scene.

The Shorty hunted along the marsh for around 45 minutes, covering a great deal of ground in a characteristic figure-of-eight pattern, with just a couple of resting periods in-between flights.
In total the bird made four flybys pass my position near the Boat House...A great end to a very memorable day.

More Tits

Well I've been itching to get out with the camera all week, but unfortunately a combination of work commitments and truly awful light conditions have laid to rest any plans I may have had to get out there and satisfy my desire.

                                                                                                                                       

 

I'm pleased to report that all as not been lost though and I've spent the last couple of evenings processing some photographs which have remained overlooked for the last few years.

I've actually got an archive of unprocessed shots running into the tens of thousands and its actually been a pleasure looking and sorting through some of those.

 

Today I'm going to carry on from where I left off at the last post and present you with some portraits of a few different varieties of Tit.

All these images were taken in the Derbyshire Peak District on a lovely late winters day in March 2010...

 

 

 

                                                                         Blue Tit

 

 

Coal Tit

 

 

Great Tit

Back With A Renewed Passion

Its been a while to say the least since my last post...Over 4 years in fact!
The reason for this I guess is because I became a little disillusioned with the wildlife genre of photography and needed a fresh challenge.

For the last few years my photography has been infrequent and limited to street and urban type stuff, but recently the call of the wild has become overwhelming and the urge to go back to what I love and know best has gotten the better of me.

Yesterday I took a walk to a local wildlife haven and for the first time in ages I was armed with my trusty Nikon and 500mm lens.
My God, I've missed it! I cant explain how much I've missed it.
It was a bitterly cold morning and my fingers were frozen to the bone before I was finished, but I'm so glad that I made those tentative first steps back to be with nature.
The sights, smells and just the sheer utter tranquillity of wild places is something I don't want to be any long time away from again...My passion is renewed and I feel I have to make up for lost time.

Anyway...The photography!

To say I was a little ring rusty would be a massive understatement and it took me a good couple of hours to get my eye in and take anything like a half decent image.
The first shots I fired were of a Treecreeper spiraling up a tree in very bad light and the results were I'm afraid disappointing.
My next encounter was with a fleeting one with a Dipper feeding in the river and again I have nothing to show from that.
Finally while heading back to my car (frozen!) I spotted a small flock of Great Tits in a farmers field.
I spent a little time observing their behaviour which consisted of chasing each other and occasionally landing on a barbed wire fence; So really it was just a case of setting the camera on the tripod and waiting.
I managed to get a sequence of fairly pleasing portraits of these tiny birds and all in all I'm very happy with my first day back shooting wildlife.

                                                                      Great Tit

Respect...

The heartbreaking sight of a dead Grey Seal pup at Donna Nook....

Not by any means a pleasant image and one I thought long and hard about publishing.

To be honest, it's not really the kind of image I would normally have taken, but I did take it and I did so for a very good reason...To highlight what can happen to a wild and vulnerable animal when not given the respect it's deserved by humans.

The first rule of photographing wildlife should always be The Welfare Of The Subject Comes First!!

Sadly, there is no other place in Britain where I have seen this rule broken so many times than at this Lincolnshire Seal colony.

The lengths some so-called photographers will go to get their 'shot' is not only disturbing, but quite frankly disgusting.

Sorry for the rant, I'm not going to go into any great detail on this matter. I know there are many great photographers who have the up most respect for their subjects and environment that read my posts...This is really aimed at the ones who perhaps don't.

A New Decade and a new blog!

Well, we're just over 2 weeks into the new year and I've finally got around to doing something that I've been meaning to do for some time now...Create a blog!

Actually, I first thought about doing this a couple of years ago, but for one reason or another it never happened.
I now feel I have the time to commit to sharing my thoughts with you and I'm quite looking forward to it.

Oh, I should of really started by telling you a little bit about myself...
My name is Anthony Dixon and I spend much of my spare time photographing wildlife in the north west of England.
The purpose of this blog is to share with anybody that might be remotely interested some of my experiences with the wildlife I encounter on my travels.

I expect that there are going to be a lot of images of birds, because they are my greatest passion, but hopefully there will be other stuff too!