Yorkshire wildlife & landscape photographer

Bird photography on Texel, Netherlands

June 1, 2017

I’ve just returned from a few days’ bird photography on Texel, Netherlands and I’m now going through the images. It wasn’t just a bird photography trip, I was out there with the family but I managed to get a few hours in from first light until breakfast each day and then again in the last couple of hours of the day. Having said that, we cycled around this small Fresian island and I always had my Nikon D500 and Nikkor 200-500 on my back just in case. It came in handy a few times, particulalry for the sanderlings and ringed plover on the beach. I just pulled up, got the lens out of the backpack and crawled slowly up to them. The smae thing happened with the godwit on the post: I literally got off the bike, got out the lens and walked up to it! The images below are the first few I’ve edited in between shooting my normal, day to day commercial work for clients. I’ll keep posting a few as I edit and here, I tried to keep it to a wader theme but I did enjoy the spoonbill, so he’s made it onto this post.

Sanderling on Texel

bird photography on Texel wader habitat Texel spoobill photographed on Texel

by John

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beetles and butterflies at Carlton Marsh, Barnsley

May 15, 2017

I was out photographing beetles and butterflies at Carlton Marsh LNR today with my friends from the Wakefield Naturalists’ Society. This was one of our monthly summer field meetings and it was the first time we’d visited this reserve as a group, though I’ve been there many times before. Having many pairs of eyes made finding subjects relatively easy but I was pleased to find the wasp beetle. Wasp beetle is common and widespread in the UK and is seen from May to August. I also photographed my first dingy skipper of the summer too.

by John

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Moorland birds and mammals

May 12, 2017

I had to head up to Pately Bridge to undertake an ecologocal survey on a barn at dusk, so I decided to head up there early and try for some photos of moorland birds and mammals in the late evening sun. The grouse were there in plenty but none really played ball until one perched on a dry stone wall at sunset and he made a lovely silhoutette against the setting sun. Just afetr the sun went dowm and I was heading to the job, I came across a few rabbits outside a burrow and they were fairly tolerant of the car. I also managed oystercatcher, lapwing and an obliging meadow pipit in the warm evening sun and narrowly missed a nice shot of a wheatear.

by John

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Insect photography at Brockadale

May 12, 2017

The warm spring sunshine tempted me away from editing commercial photography shoots to head over to do some insect photography at Brockadale. There were plenty of butterflies on the wing, including brimstone, orange tip and large white and plenty of whitethroats in full song. Across the valley, the soft purring of a turtle dove was the first one I’d heard this year. Photographcally, I only managed to capture images of some common carrion flies, a tawny mining bee and a small micro moth which I have yet to identify positively. Most of the images were taken with the Nikon D500 and Nikkor 200mm f/4 macro lens, although the frst image of the flies mating was taken with the Nikkor 200-500mm and a 1.4x extender!

by John

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Treecreeper saves the day!

April 18, 2017

A six mile walk around Winteresett Reservoir today proved fairly fruitless in terms of bird photography with none of the newly arrived migrants performing for the camera. However, just as I was within 500yds of my car, I managed to grab a few shots of a very obliging treecreeper which was busy traversing up and down the large willows near the boat house. The bluebell woods seem to be at their peak and I managed a few shots with the 200-500mm lens to get some effective compression and this was the only lens I had with me other than the Fuji XPRO-1 which I have had converted to infra-red.

by John

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