You can’t really drive through certain parts of the Dales without hearing the plaintive call of the golden plover, its just such an evocative sound amd so much a part of this remote corner of Yorkshire. This bird was photographed around Tan Hill, a wild and windsept section of the Dales about as far north as you can get in Yorkshire just south of the A66 Scotch Corner to Penrith road.
.jpg "Golden plover (Pluvaris apricaria) Yorkshire Dales")
Spemt the day at a bee-eater colony. We sat in nylon pop-up hides for around 5 hours in temperatures of 35dg+! Sweat was jusr running off us but it was worth it to get up close and personal to these wonderful birds. I’m sure if I asked someone to invent me a bird and sketch it on paper, they wouldn’t come up with a colour scheme like this! A visual feast of colour and sound: fabulous!
To see more images from Bulgaria, just click on the ‘Bulgaria’ tag at the top of this post
.jpg "Bee-eater in flight with prey")
.jpg "Bee-eater in flight")
.jpg "Bee-eater in flight")
.jpg "Bee-eater in flight")
What a bird! Finally caught up with a species that has eluded me for 20 odd years in at least 5 countries! High in the mountains of northern Bulgaria lies a deep ravine with steep walls on either side of the narrow valley and around 30 feet up on one of the rock faces is a regular nest site for one of the most secretive and elusive of birds, the wallcreeper. Flicking its wings constantly as it searches the rock face for insects, this butterfly-like tiny bird is a splash of crimson and blue-grey. After feeding the female on the nest, the male would do a wonderful display flight right over our heads – if only I’d had the 300mm f/2.8 instead of a 500mm, I think I would have nailed it in flight :¬\
(To see more images from Bulgaria, just click the category tag ‘Bulgaria’ from at the top of this post)
.jpg "Wallcreeper in Bulgaria")
I’m over in Bulgaria photographing birds and other wildlife and while Ive got internet access, I thought I’d post a species a day. Today was the first day which we spent in the mountains above Sophia where the target species were nutcracker and ring ouzel. Very heavy rain hampered the photography as the nutcrakers stayed deep in the spruce trees for shelter and the low light made for very difficult shooting conditions. Here’s a shot of ring ouzel, subspecies alpinus. You can clearly see it is much more marked than our ring ouzel, the heavy white scaling on the flanks made it a very impressive bird.
(To see more images from Bulgaria, just click the category tag ‘Bulgaria’ from at the top of this post) .jpg "Ring Ouzel in Bulgaria")
A brief visit to Old Moor RSPB reserve today didn’t yield much in the way of bird photography but we came across this newly emerged four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata) whose wings were just about dry but it didn’t quite have the power of flight. This meant we could take our time in terms of photographing the insect but macro work is never easy at the best of times and the constant breeze made the job twice as hard. With subjects like this, it is imperative to be parallel to the subject to retain as much depth of field as possible. The wind, however, was causing the insect to droop its wings forward a little and at these magnifications, just those few millimeters shift causes a huge loss in focus. Here are four images that I like and they were photographed using a variety of lenses, namely a 14-24mm, a 105mm macro and a 500mm with around a yard of extension tubes to drop the minimum focus distance!
.jpg "four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata) nature photography")
four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata)
.jpg "four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata) wildlife photographer west Yorkshire")
four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata)
.jpg "Wildlife and landscape photographer Yorkshire")
four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata)
.jpg "John Gardner wildlife and landscape photographer")
four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata)
four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata) at RSPB old Moor wetlands by Yorkshire landscape and wildlife photographer John Gardner. Nature photography in the UK
