photography – Page 2 – Tales from Wild Wales

Into the ice cave……

Earlier in the year in a post about willow/marsh tits I happened to mention that I had been in the Swiss Alps during March. How did that come about? Well, if I had had a bucket list it would have contained two must-do’s ; revisit Venice and travel across the Alps by train on the route of the Bernina Express. Using the indispensible “Man in Seat 61” website* I discovered that I could do both on one trip – travel out to Venice on a sleeper train, and back over the Alps via the Bernina Express. Talk about killing two birds with one stone!

I had four days in Venice followed by three elsewhere on “The Lagoon”, and then made my way to the Swiss border for the start of the scenic route. And scenic it certainly was, but not in the way I was expecting. For most of the three days I was in and around the Alps the cloud was well below mountain top level and fine snow fell almost continuously. Think hill fog and drizzle at 6000 feet altitude and temperatures around zero. While in some ways this was disappointing, it was very atmospheric.

I stayed in Pontresina, a resort not far from St Moritz. Winter sports are very big there, as you can imagine, particularly cross-country ski-ing. There is a network of XC trails which are apparently swept every morning to make sure conditions are just-so for the skiers. Walkers are also well catered for; there are two low level, easily do-able (even in complete snow cover) walks from Pontresina; one up Val Roseg to a mountain hotel famous for its cakes (I had cheesecake) ; the other involving a short train ride then an uphill walk towards the ice-cave at the mouth of the Morteratsch Glacier. I say ‘towards’ because the first section is easy enough but then you need to go off-piste, upwards and cross-country. I doubted whether I would be capable of it. For one thing my walking boots were completely unsuitable for deep snow. I decided to go for it anyway and see what might happen.

*_{My Swiss friend inside the ice cave}*

Shortly after leaving the railway station I fell in with another man who was going my way. He was from a town not far away, a proper mountaineer and a photographer to boot, and kitted out for the occasion with camera bag, tripod, heavy duty footwear and XC skis. He was heading for the glacier. We talked photography and landscape non-stop and in what seemed like no time at all had arrived at the end of the marked trail. Here he persuaded me – in the nicest possible way – to accompany him to the ice cave. I couldn’t say no! So he jammed his skis into the snow, left them there, and we set off. When progress got more difficult he loaned me his walking poles, and even carried my camera bag for me in the trickiest sections. How kind of him!

I can’t say it was easy even with his help, in some places wading through deep drifts of soft snow overlying boulder scree, but we did eventually arrive. At that point we did our own thing, he with his heavyweight full frame Nikon gear including a clutch of prime lenses and me with my puny (but effective) micro 4/3rds set-up. A guided walking group arrived before we left and they formed a nice contrast to the primeval scenes within the cave. I found myself particularly visually drawn to a ribbed ice formation just outside the cave entrance, which allowed some nice abstract images..

It was soon time to leave as I had a train to catch – the first stage in my journey home. I slithered and slid down to the trail where we parted ways again. He had been so patient with me! We said our goodbyes, he fitted his skis and was soon whizzing away downhill. I walked quickly back to the station and ….. surprise, surprise ….. there was a restaurant with a fine selection of cakes! Earl Grey tea and a slice of apricot tart for me please!

* NB : For anyone considering long distance rail travel to or in Europe or elsewhere I cannot recommend The Man in Seat 61 website highly enough.

www.seat61.com

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Immaculate birds, constant activity and plenty of noise!

I might be a raptor nut but I love terns too. Wales is a bit of a “tern desert” and with one exception (little terns near Prestatyn) one must visit Anglesey to connect with them. Cemlyn Bay on the north coast is the Welsh tern H.Q. with its large sandwich tern colony, alongside smaller numbers of arctics and commons. On a good day one might see a roseate as well. I can confidently say that a visit to Cemlyn is one of the finest wildlife experiences in Wales. But your timing needs to be carefully judged.

The ideal time is just after the tern chicks have fledged because their parents then guide them to the shingle spit which divides the lagoon from the sea, away from the chaos of the nesting islands. But leave it too late and the whole damn lot of them will have left altogether! Last year I arrived on July 23rd to find that most had already gone, whereas in 2020, August 1st was just perfect.

This year I discovered that the North Wales Wildlife Trust helpfully posts updates on the progress of the colony on its website. It suggested that a visit sooner rather than later would be advisable. So I headed north late on July 12th. The following morning I was there bright and early for the full tern colony experience. Immaculate birds, constant activity, and plenty of noise! Despite nearly 50 years of birding experience I have never totally got to grips with the differences between arctic and common terns. Many birders refer to them as “comics” because they are so difficult to separate. However after this visit I think I’m getting there! Sandwich terns are comparatively easy, and I have so rarely come across roseates that identifying one would be a real adventure (but see this post…..).

*_{^{Roseate tern (r.) with three sandwich terns. Note its long black bill and long-ish red legs..}}*

As it happened I picked up my first roseate quite quickly. It was visible on and off on the near edge of the main nesting island during the morning, and around lunchtime there were two together. I was able to get a few (rather poor) photographs of them. One of the tern wardens arrived soon afterwards and I was able to point them out to him. How about that for confidence! But as he had been seeing them throughout the breeding season he wasn’t too excited. He told me that one pair had attempted to breed early on but had failed, while he was still hoping that another pair would soon appear from the denser vegetation on the island with a youngster.*

For some time prior to that I was in “spray and pray” (or point and hope) mode. In other words: point your camera at a bird in flight, press the shutter button and try to follow it. This seems to me to be rather a technical task more dependent on luck than anything else, and I find it rather unsatisfying.

What I found more challenging was to place the terns within the landscape to give them some kind of context. At low tide, during the middle of the day, many roosted on the beach or on rocky outcrops along the foreshore. One could thus place them within an unspoiled landscape, suggesting that all is well with the world, which is perfectly valid. Alternatively, shooting from a different angle, one could set them against the massive hulk of Wylfa nuclear power station , now disused, only a couple of miles away. The viewer can then make up their own mind about the state of the world.

As I mentioned this was during the middle of the day when the sun was at its highest. This is never a good time to take photographs of anything in summer so one does one’s best to compensate for it at the processing stage. Some of the newer features in Lightroom are excellent for this – in particular the ease with which “objects” can be selected and processed individually without affecting the rest of the image. And “denoise” is excellent, although rather slow on my PC.

Another thing I noticed very clearly was how the apparent colour of the power station changed during the course of the day. Its colour scheme at breakfast time matches the colour of the lichen covered rocks on the foreshore very well, and it would be uncanny if this had not been part of its design. I included a photograph illustrating this in my book “Wales at Waters Edge”; I wonder if anyone noticed….? But by early afternoon the plant was naturally bathed in blue light and looked quite different. To put it more technically, the colour of sunlight is towards the blue end of the colour spectrum (“cooler”) during the middle of the day, while it is “warmer” earlier and later. This is well known among photographers but I have never known it being demonstrated so clearly as it was that day.

Arriving as early as July 13th was, in the event, quite a close shave. A note on Facebook from the tern wardens on the 18th said that most of the terns (95% of them) had already left the area. I wish them good luck on their travels and hope they make it back to Cemlyn next year.

*N.B. : The second pair also failed …..

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Pipsqueaks.

Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli in Welsh) is situated off the tip of the Lleyn Peninsula (Penllyn), separated from the Welsh mainland (Y Tir Fawr) by only a short sea crossing, but it could be many miles away. With its remote location, the island tends to attract rare migrants; it also has a manx shearwater colony and a bird observatory. Together with Jane (my partner) and three good friends, I spent last week there. It was actually my seventh stay on the island; each week has been quite different and I well my remember my first. I picked up an infection, probably from the spring water supplied to the houses, which laid me low for a few days. Alone in my accommodation, I felt very ill indeed and believed I could have died there without anyone knowing! Fortunately in recent years a water purification system has been installed.

After another visit I was chatting to a Welsh-speaking neighbour and told her I had just spent a week on Enlli. She looked at me very strangely, and then explained that Enlli is the name of the psychiatric ward at the local hospital. I’ve always used the name Bardsey since then…….

I don’t usually resort to cliches such as “bird of the week” but just this once I’m going to. It could have been the (scarlet) rosefinch which my friend Jonathan first identified, and whose song could be clearly heard from our kitchen table for a couple of days. The island has a large population of my favourite bird, the chough, and their calls could frequently be heard wherever you were. But the chough is a Schedule One (specially protected) species during the breeding season so I tended to avoid them. So I’m going to plump for something much more familiar – the oystercatcher. As you walked around the island you would pass from one oystercatcher territory to the next, and you would be subject to a new tirade of raucous high-pitched screeching. One bird was particularly aggressive, repeatedly flying noisily towards me at eye-level and only veering away at the last second. I believe on one occasion its wing tip brushed my arm as it flew past.

Their behaviour and alarm-calling is designed to alert their youngsters of the presence of a potential predator (in this case me) and it is obviously very successful. No matter how hard I tried I never managed to locate a single chick. They leave the nest as soon as they hatch and must hide amongst the pebbles and boulders amongst which they are feeding. But I wondered how intelligent the adults actually are. I found that while I was standing upright I was fair game for all the aggression that they could muster. But if I made a half-hearted attempt to “hide” or lower my profile their behaviour became calmer and their calling quieter. It was during these moments that I was able to photograph them in a more relaxed fashion. I ended up with hundreds of oystercatcher images, and have spent many hours deleting and processing them since I returned home.

It was during these lulls in activity that also I coined a new name for the species – “pipsqueaks”. After all, they don’t actually eat oysters ………….

Enjoy…….

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A tricky one…..

In spring 2020 we were all locked down in our homes. On my daily walk (well, one of them….), I discovered a red kite nest just five minutes away. It was easily visible from the track running through the wood and the female didn’t bat an eyelid as you walked past. When she was ‘off duty’ her mate took over and it was panic stations as soon as he saw anyone. The owners of the woodland, both red kite lovers, were managing it for firewood and wildlife and noticed exactly the same thing. They were happy to let me take my kit just inside the wood where I could be slightly closer . And the female carried on incubating as if nothing untoward was happening. It seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. Red kite is a Schedule One species in the UK, meaning that it is illegal to disturb nesting birds at any time during the breeding cycle – from nest-building to post fledging. But was I disturbing her? It didn’t look like it but it was rather a grey area legally.

*_{Beauty is in the eye of the beholder}*_……….

I waited until the chick had hatched and then visited the wood several times during late May. By the 21st the chick was strong enough to raise its head over the rim of the nest and I was able to photograph it with its mum looking on adoringly ( I may be anthropomorphising here ….). By the 25th it was stronger and its white down had become largely brown, with just a few tufts of white on its head. On the 30th the female was leaving the nest for short periods of time and on one occasion, while she was away, a magpie crept unseen close to the nest. As soon as she saw it she was back like a shot. I did not believe a kite could look so threatening! I was set up with the camera and long lens on the tripod, focussed on the nest, so was able to quickly take a few frames of the action. I was thrilled…… and the magpie made a hasty retreat.

You may recall that spring and early summer of 2020 were warm and sunny for long periods, often with no cloud at all, which made lockdown quite bearable. It also meant that for long periods of time photography was difficult with harsh sunlight throughout the middle of the day. Photographing in woodland in these conditions involves dark leaf and branch shadows and bright highlights, with massive contrast differences. The red kite nest was no exception. I decided to give it a break until some more photographer-friendly conditions came along. When I returned about a week later I discovered something tragic had happened to the kite chick. My friends had just discovered that it had disappeared and the parents were flying around in an anxious and agitated fashion. That was the end of the kites’ nesting attempt and they drifted off fairly soon afterwards. What had happened was a mystery, and the nest disintegrated and disappeared over the next couple of years.

So why am I recounting this story in April 2025? Well…. the kites are back! A pair has built a new nest in a different tree only about ten yards from the 2020 nest, in a very similar position, right out in the open, below eye level as seen from the track, and the female doesn’t bat an eyelid as you walk past. My guess is that she is the same bird that I photographed in 2020.

I am currently monitoring red kites in the area surrounding my home and have a licence to disturb the birds at the nest for this purpose. However it doesn’t include photography, unless incidental to the monitoring. I did inquire about a photography licence but the paperwork looked like it would take forever to complete. So I’m wondering if I can photograph the chick’s development at this nest in particular, with the very confiding female, without breaking the law. It’s a tricky one.

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Do you know your willow tit from your marsh tit?

There can be no more difficult bird i-d challenge in the UK than distinguishing willow tit from marsh tit. According to ‘Birds in Wales’ willow tit was not even proven to occur in the UK until 1897, and for several decades following that “…its distinct identification from marsh tit was not universally accepted”. The Collins Bird Guide suggests various subtle differences; for example marsh tit has a glossy black cap while the willow’s is matt. The white cheek is more extensive on the willow than the marsh, and one (the willow tit) has a pale panel on its wing while the marsh doesn’t. The black bib is “usually” larger in the willow than the marsh. However a video from the British Trust for Ornithology now suggests that it is not safe to distinguish one from the other on any of these characteristics. The only reliable difference is a pale grey spot at the base of the upper mandible (the beak) which the marsh has but the willow doesn’t. This conclusion would have been reached following the close examination in the hand of large numbers of individuals by bird ringers, so is likely to be correct. But no wonder there was such a long period of doubt over whether both species existed in the UK.

*_{Along with the willow tits came crested tits………}*

It is widely agreed that the safest way of telling one from the other is by voice. I’m not confident that I’ve ever definitively seen or heard either species, but during the winter I heard a new (to me) bird song on a regular walk in some woodland below the house. I believed it was either a willow tit or a marsh tit. It sounded very like a wood warbler, which, being a summer visitor, could not have been present. My Collins Bird Guide specifically mentions a “series of pensive, melancholy, wood warbler-like notes”, under willow tit. I hadn’t actually seen the bird but this was about as good an i-d feature as I was likely to get. I announced my record on the Ceredigion Bird Blog, with the caveat that Ian Morris – the county’s resident willow tit expert – might have an opinion on it. A few days later I had an interesting email from another Ceredigion birder who had had a similar experience to mine. Over a period of some weeks he had re-visited his location and played back a recording of the willow tit song. On every occasion he had attracted a pair of nuthatches! It’s enough to make you tear your hair out!

A few weeks later Ian Morris visited and we walked down to the location where I had heard my mystery bird. He played back the song but there was no response. It was a long shot really but he didn’t believe the habitat was right for willow tit anyway…..much more suitable for marsh …………

One reason I recount this cautionary tale is that during March I spent a couple of days quite high in the Swiss Alps. It still being deep mid-winter some lovely conifer woodland there was blanketed with fresh snow and almost completely devoid of of birdlife. The main exceptions were flocks of tits roaming around waiting for hand-outs from folks like me. Among them were “poecile montanus” (according to the interpretation boards) which were so bold as to perch on people’s hands to grab a seed or two. This, of course, is the willow tit, which, according to the bird books, rarely even visits bird tables in winter ……..

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A walk along the beach.

Just after the New Year we went for a low tide walk along the beach at Ynyslas. It was stunning …… blue skies, no wind….everything you could want from a winter’s day. We walked from the golf club car park, round the end of the dunes to the visitor centre (soon to be closed); then after a cup of coffee back along the board walk to return to the car park along the beach. By this time lengths of the peat underlying the sand had been exposed. As I walked along, Jane drew my attention to a small flock (21 birds) of sanderling which had alighted on the peat just behind me. I hesitated for a while before extracting my camera from my backpack. I expected them to fly off immediately, but they stayed put, probing in the peat for food, and running backwards and forwards as the waves washed in and out. I had two minutes with them before they flew off as quickly and mysteriously as they had arrived.

Enjoy the photographs!

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A close encounter.

In an earlier post I explained how I had been unable to sharpen a particularly good (……. I thought) image in Lightroom. Under normal circumstances Lightroom does everything I need, including sharpening, but it is not designed for more extreme situations. In my post I explained that I had successfully sharpened the image in Topaz Sharpen AI, but that my trial version added a watermark. Unfortunately it was no longer available and its successor, Photo AI, costs close on $200. How much was a I willing to pay for such specialised software?

Luminar Neo also has built-in AI sharpening and is available for a more reasonable price. The marketing spiel for this software suggests that it is aimed mainly at those who wished to replace skies in their images, which is anathema to me. But I swallowed my pride and signed up for a trial. It seemed to sharpen my problem file but I could not get it to work as a plug-in to Lightroom, which was a pain. It seemed there must have been a bug in the software and their technical people were using me as a guinea pig to trouble-shoot it. I gave up. Then Photo AI appeared at a “sale” price and I took the plunge.

I have recently been going through my files from the last decade for a potential sale to a rewilding charity. In some ways this is a tedious chore involving making countless decisions between images differing only by minutiae. However at the same time I was able to re-discover some that I had completely forgotten about. The one above is a case in point.

It was taken during lockdown in July 2020. I visited a local pond a number of times during that spring and summer, as it was within walking or easy cycling distance of my home. On one visit a family of stoats appeared out of the vegetation and began playing on the road. There was probably a mother and three kits. I was treated to a close encounter with this lovely group of animals which lasted about ten minutes. The youngsters were aware of me but didn’t seem to recognise me as a threat. It was the sort of encounter that wildlife watchers dream about. There was plenty of action which was quite a challenge for me with my slow reflexes. Much of the activity seemed to be play-fighting; the sequence from which the main image was taken ending up with the right-hand animal appearing to be “playing dead” on the ground.

I came away with quite a selection of images but many were below par in some way, mainly due to the narrow depth of field that long lenses produce. In the main image the left-hand animal was perfectly sharp but the one on the right just wasn’t. Fortunately Photo AI has worked wonders on the out of focus animal and I have a photograph I can feel very proud of. One for the Countryfile calendar, perhaps………*

*Or possibly not…..I’m still a professional. But you see what I mean?

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With seasons greetings.

This last year has been a humdinger for seeing the Aurora Borealis, with two stunning displays here in mid-Wales on May 10th (see this post) and October 10th. But on September 12th, which happened to be my birthday, I was just about enter a restaurant in Tywyn for my birthday meal when an aurora red alert arrived on my phone. Eek…..what a dilemma!

I decided to go ahead with the meal and not let Jane (my partner) down. An hour and a half later, the meal over, we headed down to the mouth of the Afon Dysynni , a couple of miles away, where we planned to spend the night in the camper. It is here that the railway line and coastal footpath cross the river just before it reaches the sea. At high tide the river water backs up into a lagoon known as Broadwater; and as it happened there was no wind, the water was still and the sky was clear. Would there still be any sign of the aurora?

I could immediately see that the northern sky looked “unusual”, so I set up the camera on a tripod, and began taking a series of images. I wouldn’t say I’d perfected my technique by any means but I had learned from some mistakes I have previously made with long exposures. Despite it being pitch black I could see that the silhouettes of the bridges set against the night sky would make an excellent composition. It wasn’t until I examined the files on my PC that I could see what the sensor had recorded and after some judicious processing came up with an image I’m really pleased with.

To the naked eye very little could be seen but if only our (my?) vision was more sensitive to low light levels it would have looked something like this. Even the version you can see above is drab in comparison to the sparkling processed original viewed on my monitor. I could write a book – well maybe an essay – on aurora photography and what it tells us about our own vision, but that will have to wait until another day.

On a lighter note, I usually make marmalade in the run-up to Christmas and give a few jars away as presents. This morning I left a jar by the recycling bags for the bin-men to collect. I heard the lorry drawing away so rushed outside to see if they had taken it. It was still there. I ran after them and held the jar up. “Ow, thees ees resoyclin, we down’t tek glass” he said in his brummie accent. I handed the jar over and wished him a happy Christmas.

So thanks for continuing to read my ramblings and with best wishes, seasons greetings and a virtual jar of marmalade to you all.

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Compliments.

It is always nice to receive a compliment and this is one of the nicest I’ve ever had:

I am very grateful for the photograph, which arrived safely today. I think it’s really fantastic ……,. showing clearly the bungalow, Uwch y cwm, (of) which we as a family have fond memories. I am going to get it framed. Diolch yn fawr iawn, Tec .

The image concerned (above) dates back to the 2000’s and was used on the front cover of my book Blaenau Ffestiniog. The original was on a transparency, and although I do have a good quality scanner, it had developed a fault. The sale of a single print didn’t actually cover the cost of the repair but the knowledge that the buyer was happy more than makes up for it! And of course I’ve now got a scanner that works.

Satisfying in a different way was the recent sale of ten ‘works’ from my Bird/land exhibition (click to view) to the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. The Library has been buying my work intermittently for nearly thirty years and now has well over 300 of my prints in its collection. It was interesting to look my name up in their catalogue and discover how many bits and bobs relating to my life as a photographer are stored away in their vaults. It is an honour and a compliment that the library chose to collect my work and continues to do so. It is also satisfying to know that some of it will outlive me.

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I think I’ve cracked it……

I ended my post of January 20th this year by saying “One of these days I’ll get a decent picture of a water rail.“. On October 10th I mentioned water rails again and said “My record with them is pretty sketchy. They are nimble and fast moving and tend to appear only close to dusk or dawn.“

On another visit to the Teifi Marshes at Cardigan early one morning last week all that changed. No sooner had I entered the mallard hide and sat down, than one of the little blighters started squealing from the tiny island just in front of the hide. Soon the bird appeared, quickly followed by another. It seemed as if there was some kind of dispute going on between them. This wasn’t the shy and retiring species of the text books. About nine thirty one emerged from the island’s reeds , walked towards the hide, immersed itself for a short swim, and disappeared again. A few minutes later it re-emerged and swam most of the way towards the reeds to the left-hand side, only to decide that it preferred being on the island after all, and returning. This was brazen!

I took several hundred images altogether, and it has to be said that entire sequences were either out of focus or just generally mushy. I’ve never understood why this happens. But there were enough sharp and well-lit images for me to be able to say ” When it comes to water rails, I think I’ve cracked it.”

Given that the species is renowned for being more often heard than seen, let alone photographed, I can’t imagine there is anywhere better for getting to grips with them than the Teifi Marshes.

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