June 2023 Viewfinder
There is a cure for the summertime blues in this month’s Opposite View Wildlife Photography newsletter.
If everybody looked the same, we’d get tired of looking at each other - so sang Groove Armada.
And they’d be right. But it’s not just about looks. If everybody behaved the same, we’d get tired of being with each other. It’s clear that humans are all different - we look different and have different personalities. Some of our differences are genetic, while some come from our life experiences. We accept this as fact, but do we have the same acceptance of the wildlife we watch?
I thought about this while watching the latest series of BBC Springwatch. For those of you that didn’t catch it, one of the nests that the team had a live camera trained on was a buzzard nest. The UK public watched on in horror as, during the three weeks of the programme, one of the two buzzard chicks attacked its sibling for prolonged periods daily. It eventually injured its sibling so horribly that the beaten and bloodied chick fell out of the nest and died. It was a tough watch.
The Springwatch team discussed the possible causes of this level of violence, as it wasn’t behaviour they had witnessed at buzzard nests in previous series. There wasn’t a lack of food, space or other obvious cause. But it was national treasure Chris Packham who suggested that the buzzard was simply a particularly ferocious individual. Essentially, it was down to that chick’s personality. It seems obvious when you say it like that, but how often do we look at the wildlife we photograph or watch and recognise them as individuals?
I think this happens when we take the time to closely observe the activities of particular animals - something that can often only happen in your garden, local patch or a regularly visited location where you have ongoing contact with individual animals. That is when you start to spot personality traits and distinguishing features.
Take Blue - the local roe doe I have been spending time with for over a year now - as an example. I found her tolerant and patient, allowing me to hang around taking photos of her and her babies. I believe her to be the oldest doe in the area, and with that age undeniably comes the experience of knowing when to run and when not to bother. Oh, and she also executes a perfect withering look when you mess up around her. She is a matriarchal figure who has taught me so much about her species and enabled me to use that knowledge as the starting point to get to know other individual deer with different personalities - including her two female kids.
Blue is special, and I’m currently missing her. As I mentioned in my last newsletter, the field where the deer used to rest in the long grass and where Blue used to hide her kids in the summer is being grazed by highland cows and is no longer a deer refuge. My lunchtime visits to Blue’s usual haunts are yielding fewer sightings. I believe she has found somewhere else to have her kids. I am sad I won’t have the opportunity to photograph her babies. I will miss her serene gaze telling me without words that she trusts me. Between you and me, I worry that when I see her next, she will have forgotten who I am. But all that mushy stuff aside, there is a silver lining to my blues about the lack of Blue. That is the knowledge that she is absent because she is busy being a good mother elsewhere. Since I first saw her, I know she has successfully raised two sets of twins. Her new family will be much safer in another part of the park, which is a testament to her experience and, I think, her character too. I hope my next lesson in deer behaviour from Blue is not too far away, but I am happy to wait.
Have you got to know any interesting characters on your local patch? Has having a relationship with your subject helped your wildlife photography? Let me know your experiences in the comments - I’d love to hear from you.
I’ll leave you with an image of another individual that surprised me on a recent walk. This skylark let me get incredibly close before it walked off into the heather behind a rock - presumably to take its beakful of food to a nest of hungry chicks. I wondered aloud the other day why this bird had let me get so close at such a sensitive time, and my wildlife photographer friend replied that maybe this particular bird nested close to a path because it was more tolerant of people than other skylarks. We are all different, after all.
Oh, and for those who are interested, I completed the Step Count Challenge with a total of 496,322 steps with a daily average of 8,863. Not quite 10,000 steps a day but close enough!
Best wishes,
Rhiannon
Opposite View Wildlife Photography
Through my lens
Life on the edge - photographing seabird colonies on Scotland's east coast
There's nothing like the sight, sound and (let's be honest) the smell of a seabird colony. The amount of activity concentrated in one place is overwhelming. A bustling city full of residents with one thing on their minds - raising the next generation. I say residents, but seabird cities are full of visiting birds that arrive in spring and are gone before the autumn. Job done, and off they go - back out to sea for the winter.
On a short holiday to the east coast of Scotland at the beginning of June, we visited the RSPB's Fowlsheugh nature reserve and the Arbroath Cliffs, which includes the Scottish Wildlife Trust's Seaton Cliffs Nature Reserve. Both locations are ideal for photographing seabirds, especially if you are like me and would rather avoid getting on a boat.
In this blog, I share images from that trip and explain why I ditched my previous scattergun approach to seabird photography.
Species Spotlight
Bullfinch - the blushing finch with a criminal record
The distinctive plumage of the bullfinch screams extrovert. The contrast between the monochrome head and wing colouring with the flame-red breast on the male is stunning. And while the breast colour of the female is a muted peach, she is no less striking in appearance. However, for such a bold-coloured bird, the bullfinch is a shy species but one that will reward a patient and quiet photographer.
In this blog, I share tips for capturing images of this stunning finch and explain why it has a chequered past.
And finally…
As if watching the buzzard nest on Springwatch wasn’t stressful enough, we now have another wildlife drama playing out on a roof a few doors down from our flat. A pair of lesser black-backed gulls are raising three (for now, at least) chicks on a chimney, and there have already been a few heart-in-mouth moments and foxes patrolling the area every night.
You can share my anxiety for these growing balls of fluff as I have shot footage of their recent wing-flapping and wandering antics. Will all three chicks stay on the chimney? Watch the video above to find out.
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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