June 2022 Viewfinder
There is a mixture of heaven and hell in this month's Opposite View Wildlife Photography newsletter.
Oh deer, I lied.
Last month I professed my reignited passion for pottering. I promised myself less planning, fewer projects, more meandering and allowing the wildlife to appear in front of me.
Well, that was all well and good until the wildlife appeared in the form of Hellboy - the young roe deer buck I briefly mentioned in my May newsletter. I honestly meant to stroll around other places, but the fact is that every time I got to the point in my walk where I passed the location where I had first seen him, there he was again. Cue another half hour of watching and photographing while sacking off the rest of the daily walk. Why Hellboy? Check out those little devil horn antlers in the image below. And he is pretty angelic, so the nickname makes me smile.
And it’s not just Hellboy. It appears he has a friend in the form of a young doe. Then there is the older female with her tiny kid in tow. So, it would be impossible to keep walking, wouldn’t it? The deer are less of a project and more an opportunity presented on a golden platter that I would be mad to turn down.
As Isaac Newton was keen to point out…
For every action, in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
So, while the wildlife photography gods gave with one hand, another less benevolent deity was busy infecting us with covid. What started as a promising month quickly descended into shivering on the sofa and trying to work out if my sense of smell (and taste) was ever going to return (it has, dear reader, thanks for asking).
We are now nearly three weeks post-infection and can vouch that this has been anything but a mild illness. We are incredibly grateful for being vaccinated and, therefore, having it much easier than most people at the start of the pandemic.
Luckily for me, Hellboy is only a short stroll away from our flat. As soon as I felt strong enough, I headed straight back to the same spot. At least now I have an excuse for staying put with the deer - having little energy to go anywhere else! Repeat after me: it is most certainly not a project.
Anyway, as the rain pours down outside (it must be nearly July), and before I head off for another slug of cough mixture, I will leave you with a pre-covid (for me), pre-velvet-shed (for him) picture of Hellboy. How could I possibly avoid being smitten with a boy that beautiful?
Best wishes,
Rhiannon
Opposite View Wildlife Photography
Through my lens
Rock on - raising the next generation of rock pipits
That feeling when you go out to watch peregrines and get posing pipits instead. The rock pipits were working incredibly hard - not only to catch food but to keep their young hidden - and were the perfect ground-level alternative to photographing high-flying birds of prey.
Species spotlight
Great tit - the striking survivor
One bird that I always hear long before I see is the great tit. Its high-pitched, two-syllable teacher teacher calls are loud and insistent, like a sugar-fuelled child using a squeaky bed for a trampoline. It may have a comedy name, but this is one seriously striking bird - in appearance, song and behaviour.
Warning: this blog contains adorable footage inside a great tit nest.
And finally…
Can you guess who the unexpected visitor to my trail camera was earlier this month? Let me give you a clue: I got a buzz from seeing it but the local corvids were preying it would leave. Any ideas?! Watch the video and let me know if you guessed correctly.
Don’t forget that you can watch more videos, including the camera trap clips from my time in the Lake District and lots of footage of my urban foxes, on my YouTube channel.
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Keep in touch
Thanks for reading this! If you have any comments or questions, opportunities for photography or if you would like to use any of my images, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.
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