wildlife – Page 2 – Tales from Wild Wales

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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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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Another visit to the Teifi Marshes.

It almost always worth visiting the Teifi Marshes, a Wildlife Trust reserve near Cardigan (See this post as well). The big attraction for me is the reedbed which has three hides situated within it. Two are on the edge of small pools and the third overlooks a narrow creek draining into the River Teifi. Because the pools are small any wildlife using them tends to be pretty close, and all three hides are popular with wildlife photographers. It is an exceptionally good location to see and photograph kingfishers and even water rails – although my record with the latter is pretty sketchy. They are nimble and fast moving and tend to appear only close to dusk or dawn.

Last Saturday I arrived just after dawn and made my way along the old railway line (now a multi-use path) to the hides. Two otters visited the Kingfisher pool but all that could be seen of them was the top of one head and two trails of bubbles. Entering the Mallard hide I sneezed and a water rail immediately responded with its squealing call. It was on the water’s edge just below the hide but had disappeared by the time I got my gear set up. The same pool was full of activity later on with six squabbling moorhens present. There were also eight little grebes and at one point they all gathered in a semi-circle around the moorhens to watch the battle. Real school playground stuff!

Suddenly two otters appeared from the reeds. I tried to keep calm. My camera was set up correctly to photograph them as they swam slowly across the pool. I had the hide to myself and scrambled from one side to the other in an attempt to avoid having an out-of-focus kingfisher perch in the foreground. (In the end I was able to crop it out) After just one minute the otters disappeared back into the reeds as quickly and as mysteriously as they had arrived.

Unfortunately I didn’t have time to alter the aperture setting so while the otters are sharp the heron is just out of focus. Being a perfectionist this matters to me and I need some sharpening software to improve the image. Lightroom does almost everything I need my software to do but it does have its limitations. Topaz Sharpen AI does a very good job but I only have a trial version and the output has a watermark across it. I can’t get the same results from Photo AI, its successor. Shame!

If you visit the Teifi Marshes, here’s a few pointers. Coming from the south by car head for Cilgerran and take the main drive to the car park and visitor centre (parking fee payable). From the north, it is easier to park in the industrial estate south of the river, between the two bridges, and walk to the hides along the old railway track. For seeing and photographing wildlife dawn is best; by mid-morning the reserve will be the domain of dog walkers, child minders and families with limited interest in natural history. You have been warned!

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Edit: I have since found that Topaz PhotoAI DOES give a good sharp result when used on this image and I am considering purchasing it.

Come on lads….it’s time we were off.

About thirty years ago I was part of a team of volunteers who spent a week on Ynys Enlli (Bardsey Island) looking out for Risso’s dolphins. We stayed at the lighthouse (reserved for researchers) and kept a dawn-to dusk watch for these lively cetaceans using a telescope. There were a number of sightings but all were pretty distant. One day I was on observation duty when I spotted what appeared to be a cetacean “blow” (exhalation) in the far distance. It was angled at 45 degrees to the vertical and may have been a sperm whale. I called the others out but it was just a one-off sighting.

Since then I have drifted away from marine conservation but was aware that risso’s dolphins could be seen from certain locations along the Welsh coast. As well as Enlli there were sightings from Strumble Head in Pembrokeshire, and Point Lynas on the north coast of Anglesey. In fact the latter has become a regular and almost guaranteed location at the right time of year. Many excellent photographs of risso’s have appeared on the internet in the last few years. My first visit was on September 28th 2022, when animals were certainly present and very active, but were too distant to allow successful photography. I decided to try again one day last week.

I stayed overnight with my friend Jonathan in Nantlle, about an hour’s drive on a good day from Point Lynas. We aimed to be there by high tide at 12.20 pm, but for various reasons set off far too late. Further delayed by road works and the remnants of summer holiday traffic it was actually 12.45 before we arrived at the lighthouse. A small group of Sea Watch Foundation volunteers with binoculars and clipboards were just leaving. This was not a good sign! I tentatively enquired if they had seen any dolphins and one girl told me they were “just around the corner”. A woman sitting on the rocks below the lighthouse said she had been watching them for an hour and a half. I took a quick snap as one individual disappeared beneath the waves but another small group weren’t far away. There was a sudden burst of activity from one individual in this group with vigorous tail slaps and much sea-spray, and they disappeared. It all went very quiet. I said to Jonathan “I hope it wasn’t saying to the others “Come on lads, it’s time we were off……”” But it was.

There was a fair bit of porpoise activity in the rough water off the point, and at least one more distant risso’s and a probable bottlenose dolphin or two on the walk back to the car, but that was it. What a lost opportunity!

All was not completely lost, however. I managed one sharp and pleasing image from a couple of bursts before the group disappeared (see above). It made me determined to go back to Point Lynas before the month of September was over.

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It’s not all bad news.

In recent posts I’ve written about some of the exciting and fascinating wildlife encounters I had during my May travels. These included great bustard, lady’s slipper orchid, snakeshead fritillary, even the humble Duke of Burgundy butterfly; all four were either re-introductions and/or found specifically on National Nature Reserves. Without interventions from conservationists none of these four species would be found in the UK, or would be struggling to survive. The last post of this series involves a bird species which has, on the quiet, become very much more common over the last fifty years. At the time of the first Breeding Bird Atlas (published in 1976) there was an estimated 100 pairs of hobbies in the UK. By the time of the 2013 edition, it was far more widespread, with a population of about 2,200 pairs.

The hobby is a small falcon related to the peregrine. It is fully migratory, arriving in the UK in April and leaving for Africa in September. It feeds on small birds and large insects caught on the wing. As a very fast, fluid and agile hunter it can catch even swallows and swifts in flight. On their arrival in the UK hobbies congregate at certain wetlands (where there is normally an abundance of dragonflies to feed on), before dispersing to their breeding areas. I had read of flocks or even “swarms” of hobbies at certain locations in early May and longed to see such a spectacle.

I have visited one of these locations – the Avalon Marshes, near Glastonbury – several times in recent years (see here), and it is one of my favourite UK birding destinations. Up to eight species of heron have bred there, which is extraordinary – given that just a few decades ago only the grey heron and the rare and elusive bittern were found in Britain. It was here that I headed after leaving Stonehenge.

My first evening and the following morning there were unspectacular. I was disappointed that the hides at the RSPB’s Ham Wall reserve were still closed following the Coronavirus lockdown, and birds seemed a little thin on the ground. After lunch I headed in the opposite direction along the disused railway line into Shapwick Heath NNR. Just a few minutes later I had seen my first hobbies, a dozen or more, hunting independently in a loose flock. Prey must have been small insects because there was also a very large dispersed flock of hirundines (swallows and martins) doing the same thing. Occasionally I caught sight of a bird transferring prey from its feet to beak in flight, a sure sign that these were hobbies. A few minutes later I heard loud bugling calls coming invisibly from Meare Heath to the north – surely they must have been cranes? *

I hurried on towards a northward facing hide. From there it looked like the hobbies had disappeared. I then began to pick them out in the heat haze, perched singly or in small groups on stunted dead trees amongst the reeds. Gradually they resumed their hunting and I managed a reasonable count of thirty-three birds altogether. It occurred to me that these were truly African birds spending just a few months of every year in the UK. Although they were very active, the hobbies were really too far away to photograph, so I returned to the railway line. And guess what? Hobbies, lower and much closer. Part of the same flock, no doubt, but this was more like it! I returned to the van to eat and recharge my mental batteries.

Late that evening I returned to the same area. Still hobbies! They were hunting insects low over one of the lagoons until well after sunset. Close to darkness in the far distance I could see about twenty of them perched on the stark boughs of a dead tree, one-by-one disappearing to roost somewhere nearby. They had gone by the next morning; but great white egrets – ethereal and otherworldly – floated by just outside the hide window. There must have been a nest nearby.

These spectacular birds are a very welcome addition to the British avifauna; as are the little egrets that are now a familiar sight in many parts of the UK. The flocks of hobbies that are now seen in the UK every spring are another example of the continually changing nature of our bird populations. It is a mistake to believe that wildlife distributions and numbers are normally static. For the wildlife lover there is a relentless diet of bad news in the media, and there’s no doubt that we are still losing some species rapidly. The difficulty is in distinguishing between natural fluctuations of bird populations and those changes, like the loss of farmland birds (and other wildlife), that are entirely down to human destruction of wildlife habitats.

* Sightings at nearby RSPB Ham Wall that day included a flock of eight cranes flying over, and two returning.

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Taking your chances….

I recently heard about a very approachable otter not far from here. I assumed it was a one-off but later discovered it had already been attracting wildlife watchers and photographers for several weeks. Better late than never, of course, but my first visit offered two brief, unsatisfactory views and a few unusable photographs. I was more lucky on my second visit. I first noticed the otter mid-river; it then proceeded to hunt downstream towards me in the seaweed along the edge of the channel. It very quickly came up with an eel, brought it onshore and proceeded to crunch it down. It then resumed its hunt, moving back upstream in a similar manner. I quickly realised that if I could position myself beyond it, and my luck held, it would gradually get closer. And so it did! I was particularly fortunate in that there was no-one else around, so no there was jockeying for position or complaints that I might be too close.

I lay flat on my belly on the riverbank, the otter oblivious to my presence. I repeatedly reduced the focal length of my zoom lens as it got closer. At a certain point it stared directly at me at close range without really registering what I might be. After twenty minutes with this lovely animal I realised it was finally heading downstream. Meanwhile quite a crowd had built up on the bridge: the otter and I had had quite an audience! Back on dry land I felt like I was floating on air: one photographer friend said she thought I was in shock!

I hasten to add that I had already put plenty of hours in but when an opportunity like this presents itself you just have to grasp it with both hands and take it………..

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At the beginning of the learning curve : first impressions of the Olympus OM1D EM1 Mk2.

Above Penrhyncoch, Ceredigion. (1/60th @f11; ISO 200)

In November I wrote that I had taken the plunge and bought into the Olympus micro four-thirds system (see this post). I knew I was at the very beginning of a steep learning curve and I’m probably only a couple of steps further forward four months later! For one thing, while some photographers probably never get past the “testing” phase with their new kit, I seem to be allergic to doing so. I just want to get out and actually use my equipment for real. And secondly, the weather this winter has been almost unrelentingly dull, wet and windy; I just haven’t felt like getting out into the field in those conditions. My em1mk2 / 12 – 100 f4 zoom have been sitting in their bag, together with the Panasonic 100-400 mm zoom lens which I bought during the Black Friday sales for wildlife photography.

However I’ve taken advantage of a couple of short spells of better weather and come back with some decent results. So I feel like I’m making some progress. The top picture was a bit of a grab shot taken from the side of the mountain road a few miles above my house on a morning which just seemed tailor made for landscape photography: bright blue skies and patchy cloud above and below that valley fog drifting inland from the sea. In fact, although I spent most of the day out with the camera this was the best shot of all, although I had to crop and clone out the tops of some spindly conifers in the foreground. Later that day I went down to Aberystwyth and managed a few shots of kayakers at sunset. This was a real test for the ISO capabilities of the camera; don’t look too closely, though, because it wasn’t entirely successful…!

Aberystwyth sunset (1/60th @ f11; ISO 1600)

In November I had spent a couple of days with friend in north Wales. I spent a few hours among the derelict slate quarries near Nantlle. The following day – a rare sunny one – we headed over to Anglesey and spent a couple of hours around sunset on the west coast near Aberffraw where I was able to take advantage of the em1ii’s amazing image stabilisation capabilities. The picture below was hand-held at 0.6 seconds – and perfectly sharp. Another was equally sharp at 1.6 seconds!

Eglwys-yn-y-mor Sant Cwyfan – 0.6 secs @ f8. (ISO 100)(handheld)

Last week I had my first real opportunity to use the long zoom in earnest. I met up with some birding friends in Pembrokeshire and we headed off to Carew, in the south of the county, where two or three firecrests had been regularly seen over a period of a couple of months. Sure enough one was visible on and off for an hour or so, and what a little beauty it was! Firecrests have been described as ‘little jewels’ and I would certainly go along with that description. I watched it with binoculars at first and saw it raise and spread its stunning little orange crest at close range. Eventually I got the camera out of my bag, attached the Panasonic and managed to catch it as it rested briefly between spells of frantic activity.

Firecrest, Carew Cheriton. (1/1250@ f8 ISO 1250.)

What a stunning little creature! And I was very happy with the technical quality of the picture. While the em1ii / Panasonic 100-400 zoom combo is still pretty chunky it is about half the weight and size of my previous Canon 5d4 / Tamron 150- 600 set-up. And despite the massive difference in sensor size, on the evidence of this picture, image quality is very similar. Bearing in mind the crop factor of the micro four-thirds format I can cover the entire range of focal lengths from 24 to 800mm with just the two lenses. The handful of outings I’ve had with my new kit this winter have persuaded me that it is worth persevering with the em1ii’s rather frightening manual and the online guide (442 pages long) by Tony Phillips which a fellow user directed me towards.

So watch this space for more pictures and roll on springtime!

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