A Halcyon Day

LEIGHTON MOSS – AVOCETS, HARRIER ACTION, A MAD LAPWING AND A MAGIC MOMENT

25th May 2013

May has been a busy month and I have had little time for photography. But I took my opportunity on Saturday as the weather forecast was good and I got out of bed early enough to reach Leighton Moss RSPB reserve before 8am.

I followed the strategy described in my previous blog about Leighton Moss. I start  at the Eric Morecambe hide because it gets the best light first. I managed some shots of avocets feeding. The viewpoint of the hide is rather high, but this enhances the view of the reflections.

The islands in the scrape had lots of nests. I think most of the black-headed gulls were on eggs and I spotted an incubating oystercatcher too. A few of the avocets had hatched their chicks, but they were still quite small and too far away for decent pictures. I tried shooting the gulls and avocets mobbing a young herring gull; I got one shot of a black-headed gull hovering just over the herring gull’s head, but it was facing in the wrong direction. 

At the main reserve I got good views of a marsh harrier male hunting over the reeds as I walked across the causeway. I was even luckier when I reached the Lower hide, as I saw the male bring in prey and one the females came off her nest. I had never seen a food pass before, but I managed to get a distant shot as the female came for her meal.This shot and the next one are quite heavily cropped.

I wish I could say that this was the first shot of a sequence, but I lost focus on the birds so the other shots were useless. Distant shots of the birds against a fairly high contrast background were too tough a test for the autofocus of my Nikon D300s.

The female harrier returned to her nest to feed, the male cruised around for a while, before perching. There are currently 2 males and 6 females nesting at Leighton Moss, so each male is hunting for four: of course they will be even busier when the chicks hatch as the females cannot hunt until the chicks are large enough to be left on their own. However the male couldn’t rest for long, he had to soar up to chase a buzzard away. The birds were too high to be easy to photograph, but the dogfight was quite dramatic. Both birds have similar wingspans, but the harrier was much lighter and more manoeuvrable than the powerful buzzard, so it keep high, threatening to strike down, and forcing the buzzard to roll or turn to strike upwards. Actually I don’t think they touched, but they certainly came close.

I ended my visit at the Grisedale hide. There was a mad male lapwing trying to impress a female with wild display flights and lots of ‘peewit’ calls.  Fortunately he had a predictable flight pattern; the slow section was just after take-off from a boggy patch, so I prefocussed in front of it and managed an action shot.

Another marsh harrier came over, I think it was a young male showing the first traces of grey plumage. I don’t think it was one of the breeding birds, but it was hunting and it made a kill in the reeds after I had taken a few shots.

Why was it a halcyon day?

I have left the best until last: halcyon is the Greek name for the kingfisher. At the Allen hide, I was hoping that an avocet chick south of the hide would come close enough to photograph, but I noticed a kingfisher at the other end of the scrape. I was not surprised because I have had glimpses around the scrapes before and the pools and channels on the other side of the railway line behind the hides look like possible kingfisher habitat too.
The avocet chick decided to have a rest, so I went to the other end of the hide to watch the kingfisher fishing off the blue plastic posts of the electric fence around the scrape (which was installed to protect the avocets). When it came nearer to the end of the hide, I took a few photos, rather distant but better than I had managed before, then the bird suddenly dived for a fish. Fortunately for me, it missed. Then it flew towards the hide, perching on the fence post nearest to my window. I pushed the focus button and held my breath. It seemed to take several minutes before the image popped into focus in my viewfinder, but what I saw was breathtaking. The kingfisher was gleaming because it was directly down sun from my camera position. I took 47 photos in 43 seconds. Many of them are almost identical, but this is one of the best: the blue plastic post is not the most photogenic of perches - but I was just delighted by this little male.

White plus Black and Grey

LITTLE EGRETS & JACKDAWS AT SLIMBRIDGE

1st May 2013

Rather later than intended, here are the photos I took at Slimbridge before Monty the crane appeared.

I had excellent views of little egrets hunting in front of the Martin Smith and Robbie Garnett hides. It was not so long ago that seeing a little egret in full breeding plumage would have sent any British birder into paroxysms of joy. It is too easy to become dismissive about these beautiful birds now that they have become so familiar. They are very elegant all the year round, but in spring their plumes or aigrettes add an extra dimension.

As I have written  before, water bird shots look good when there is a reflection to offer a double view of the subject and this also shows the quality of the water surface; the photo below demonstrates the energetic way that egrets shuffle their feet to disturb their prey, even when the water is deeper than their ideal. With pure white birds, you get a marvellous bonus when ripples are reflected from their breasts.

The birds in front of the Robbie Garnett hide were so close that I couldn't include the main reflection - although of course I was using the 700mm combination. I think there are three different egrets in these photos, they don't seem to take much notice of each other when they are foraging. Watching through the viewfinder I thought the bird below was warning off another, but when I looked around there was no other bird nearby.

You certainly don't have to watch a hungry egret for too long before you see it make a catch; they are remarkably efficient hunters of small fishes. These birds were catching sticklebacks. You can see the stickleback's spines in the photo below, but they didn't save the fish from the egret.

The traditional problem with shooting white birds in bright sunlight is overexposure, resulting in loosing highlight detail ('blowing the highlights' in photographic jargon). The conditions for these shots were a stiff test, but I think I have avoided this problem: I always set my D300s to underexpose by 2/3 stop compared to the factory setting, which usually avoids the problem, particularly as I always try to use the minimum ISO setting (200) - but a couple of test shots and a histogram check are still advisable. I also shoot 14-bit NEF (Nikon Raw) images, so that I have a little extra safety margin available when I am processing a 12-bit image. I use Capture NX2 because it is matched to NEF images and I like to set white and black control points on my images to get a full tonal range.

I'm quite sure that jackdaws recognise that inside the boundaries of Slimbridge, people are no threat, so they are very relaxed when close to the hides. Jackdaws are favourites of mine: adaptable, agile, intelligent, sociable and wonderful fliers. This bird was having a rest after raiding the feeders opposite the Robbie Garnett hide, I think (s)he felt that the seed mix was too good for the goldfinches and great tits.

This bird was hunting insects in the grass right in front of the Martin Smith hide.The problem with these photos is that there is no true white point in them (even the highlight in the eye of the bird below is distinctly blue). I find it much harder to process these shots by setting a black point and finding a true neutral grey point and adjusting its brightness.

Monty’s Birthday Bath

A CRANE AT SLIMBRIDGE

1st May 2013

I have been itching to get to Slimbridge since I learned that a pair of the cranes released by the Great Crane Project had returned to Slimbridge and built a nest on Tack Piece, right in front of the Martin Smith Hide. I finally had my chance on May Day.

When I reached the hide, a little before 11am, it became clear that the birds had not gone through with their attempt. This was hardly surprising because they are still very young. I caught a glimpse of the pair in the far corner of the field, but by the time I reached the Holden Tower, the birds had flown.

I had seen a group of 5 cranes in the distance on my previous visit to Slimbridge in February, so I was disappointed not to get a better view. Anyway I had a walk around the grounds, without taking any photos until I returned to Tack Piece and managed to get some shots of little egrets and jackdaws (which will appear here soon, of course).

I decided to make a final visit to the Martin Smith Hide just before 2pm. Shortly after I sat down, a WWT volunteer entered the hide and pointed out that one of the cranes was close to the boundary fence (I admit I hadn’t spotted it, Tack Piece is a large field). He said he was going to give a talk about the cranes outside the hide in a few minutes. Luckily I was sitting close to the door, so I could hear his talk but also keep my eyes on the crane which was coming closer.

Actually I already knew quite a bit about the Great Crane Project, which is trying to reintroduce cranes to south west England. They have imported 20 crane eggs from Germany each year since 2010. The chicks are reared at Slimbridge, using techniques developed at the International Crane Foundation at Barraboo, Wisconsin to help them to survive in the wild. Then they are released in the Somerset Levels. A few of the older birds have returned to Slimbridge for visits in the past year, although it is at least 40 miles north of their intended home.

I knew that the cranes which tried to nest were Monty and Chris, who were in the group I saw previously. As the crane approached the hide, I thought it looked tall enough to be a male, so I guessed it might be Monty. I was amazed that it came straight back to the nest, now occupied by a broody coot, so I took care to get some shots showing the colour rings on its legs.

A quick visit to the GCP website (http://www.thegreatcraneproject.org.uk/) in the evening confirmed that this bird is Monty. I also learned that he had hatched on 1st May 2010, so it was his third birthday! He celebrated by having a nice bath in front of the hide, so I had an amazing opportunity for photographs – luckily my 500mm and TC1.4 combination was long enough for decent framing – these cranes are wild birds that have been trained to avoid humans, if Monty had come any closer to the hide he would probably have been scared off.

When the volunteer finished talking, I felt that I ought to spread the word, so I stuck my head out of the door and said ‘one of the cranes is having a bath straight in front of the hide’ and the other visitors were able to see Monty for themselves.

I see from the GCP website that the first batch of 2013 eggs arrived at Slimbridge on May Day. They plan to bring in more eggs next year, and it is hoped that Monty and Chris and their contemporaries will nest successfully by 2015.

NEWS  20th May

WWT have announced that Monty and Chris are incubating at least one egg in a new nest in the Rushy Pen, just over the fence fromTack Piece.

UPDATE 4th June 

WWT announced yesterday that a crane chick hatched successfully, but disappeared within a couple of days. It either fell victim to a predator or to a spell of bad weather. Disappointing news, but hardly unexpected for such young parents.

Member's Day at Chester

MORE MONKEY PORTRAITS

20th April 2013

Chester Zoo has three Member’s Days each year. Members can bring guests at reduced prices and they get a few little freebies too, although I have never bothered to use any of my free monorail tickets. There is also a programme of meetings with keepers, which can be interesting. It was a very busy day as Member’s Day coincided with the first nice Saturday in weeks, so the zoo was expecting more than ten thousand visitors (and I would be surprised if they didn’t exceed that number).

It’s an interesting time at the Zoo because work has just started on the Islands exhibit which is a major extension on undeveloped land behind the oryx enclosure. It is due to open in two years time, which might seem slow going, but after all the great crested newts are moved, a big new tropical house will be built for birds, crocodiles and Sumatran orang utans, with a smaller house for Komodo dragons. There will also be a new waterway for boat rides, enclosure complexes for the orangs, Sumatran tigers (with a tunnel), aviaries for hornbills and various other livestock. Then it will take time to install drains, filters, heating systems and visitor facilities, more time for planting and theming and finally of course the animals will have to be settled in.

Zoos always aim to have new exhibits open around Easter, when visitor numbers start to rise during the school holidays, but before the peak visiting period in summer. This year’s developments at Chester are linked to the planning for Islands. There is a new off-show breeding aviary complex which may be used to raise birds for Islands. The old crane aviary has been turned into a bird rearing unit, particularly for cranes and waterfowl, which will be interesting. A couple of new species are already on show, but they will eventually move into Islands: a Malayan tapir is in the old Cattle House instead of the wart hogs and Javan banteng have replaced the bongos near the old entrance. The bongos have been moved next to the zebras in the West Zoo. Many of the other animals for Islands are already kept in the Zoo; once they are moved we expect that their current enclosures will be renovated for further new species.

Of course I had my camera with me, but as I spent so much time talking with friends and a couple of keepers, I didn’t take my usual number of photos. I did spend some time in Miniature Monkeys where the golden-headed lion tamarins and emperor tamarins had been moved back to their old enclosure and were calling loudly to each other as they explored the trees. It needed patience to get good views and even more to get some photos, particularly when the sunlight was filtered by the leaves, but I got a couple of decent shots with my trusty 500mm tele. The first is a sort of MGM shot, (although lion tamarins don't roar, they chirp), the second is a moment of caution while checking it is safe to descend to the ground.

Chester’s monkey house only holds four species, but they are all kept in big groups, so there is always something going on. Their outdoor enclosures are large and thickly planted so it can be difficult to see the monkeys if they don’t come near the moats. I was lucky to get good views of this lion-tailed macaque and young mandrill.

At the end of the day, I was walking with a couple of friends when we found the aardvarks were active. I confess that I had never seen them awake before, so I was pleased that the light was still good enough for me to get decent results with my 105mm lens.

Metropolitan Miscellany

LONDON ZOO

14th April 2013

My time for photography in the past few weeks has been limited by the weather and a heavy schedule of decorating and refurbishing. However as I was in London for the Man Ray show I took the chance to go to the Zoo as the weather was nice and I reckon that there are more subjects per square metre in Regents Park than anywhere else in the UK.

As I have been visiting the Zoo for more than 40 years, I have seen a lot of changes. Most of them have been very much for the better, but I am not convinced by all of them. London Zoo is handicapped by the high costs of its location and by a number of dreadfully bad buildings, which some moron decided should be listed in spite of the fact that they are useless. If I ruled the world, the Casson building (originally the elephant house) would be rubble within a week and anyone who wanted the quaint Tecton penguin pool would have 30 days to remove it before it suffered the same fate. That would give space for some proper monkey enclosures, rather than a few left over from the Sobell pavilion and a couple originally designed for small cats. 

The only modern monkey enclosure is the outdoor one constructed for the group of white-naped mangabeys, which make a good show. This is the youngest infant. I’m sure there was trouble when mother saw that dirty face. All the photos in this blog were taken with my 500mm lens, unless otherwise specified.

 

 The mangabey paterfamilias is an impressive animal.

On the other hand, the old Bird House has been remodelled rather nicely and renamed as the Blackburn Pavilion. I particularly like the large indoor aviary, which has well-balanced spaces for birds and visitors, good planting and a very interesting collection of birds. I think my favourite species is the little blue-crowned lory – there was only one on show and I think it was just completing its moult, but even so it looked stunning. 

I didn’t get any shots of the blue grosbeak and only poor ones of the male sugarbird and the African pygmy geese, but the male splendid sunbird posed for me beautifully. It may seem strange to use a long telephoto lens in such a relatively small space, particularly as most of the birds are quite tame: but I find it helps to isolate the bird in the vegetation. The light is quite good on a nice day, but it is a test of technique and as I use the lowest ISO setting to get full image quality I expect quite a lot of shots to fail due to movement and focus error. On the other hand when everything works well the images can be exciting.

There were more of these sunbirds in the little individual hummingbird flights, together with this nice emerald hummingbird. I think it is the only one on public display in the UK at the moment. This shot was taken with my 105mm macro lens.

I also like the new outdoor aviaries, except that they now have shiny steel mesh which reduces contrast when you shoot through it (unlike black painted wire which can be made to disappear in photos). However it is possible to process the images to get a full tonal range; I used Nikon Capture NX2 to set black and white control points for this shot of a buff-banded rail sunbathing.

 

With care, the 500mm lens also gives good images through the strong wires of the big macaw and cockatoo aviary. I would have liked to shoot the pair of Banksian cockatoos, but they were perched too close to the wire. This green-winged macaw was nibbling the vegetation on the ground, which was much more convenient.

Regular zoo-goers will realise that all the birds I have mentioned are species that you won’t see in other British zoos, except for the macaw. A slightly more common species is the green peafowl seen in the Snowdon Aviary – it is even more handsome than the common blue peafowl. A shot with my 105mm lens - it's not just for macro work.

On the other hand the remodelled Clore Pavilion is not really to my taste. The nocturnal section was once home to a huge range of exotic species, I am happy that they have given the animals more space by doubling up the exhibits – but in my opinion brown rats and chinchillas belong in pet shops, particularly as so many of the old enclosures have been removed or taken off-show. The same could be said about the diurnal exhibits – half of the old enclosures are now off-show. I have mixed feelings about the central rainforest hall, it does give the tamarins and titis a nice space, but it’s not a good way of showing the sloth, tamandua or armadillo. I had a good opportunity to shoot with my 105mm macro when this young emperor tamarin came close to the visitor's balcony.

 

The major new exhibits, Gorilla Kingdom, Penguin Beach and Tiger Territory are all considerable improvements on what went before, although I feel that providing each one with a fluffy toy kiosk is commercial overkill. I got a glimpse of Kumbuka, the male gorilla, who arrived from Paignton a few days before my visit; he was looking around from the bridge over the public corridor, between the gorilla’s off-show area and their indoor dayroom. It was amusing to see Effie and Mjukuu jostling each other as they tried to find the best spot for watching him. Gorillas are sensitive animals and it will take weeks of step-by-step introductions before Kumbuka is swaggering around the enclosure in proper silverback fashion.

I regret that I only had time for a quick trot around the aquarium, but I always take my time in the Reptile House. It’s still the best display of reptiles in the UK and the new amphibian area is a great improvement on the small enclosures it has replaced. Here is a Mallorcan midwife tadpole which is almost ready to leave the water - another macro shot of course.

I must admit that my favourite animals in the zoo are the strange but elegant pig-nosed turtles (also called Fly River turtles). Their aquarium has scratches on the front glass, so I had to do some cloning on the image below, which I took with my 30mm f/1.4 Sigma lens. You can see the frame holding lights above the containers for the side-necked terrapins behind the turtle's tank.

These turtles are very special: they have no close relatives, although they in some ways they resemble marine turtles because they are entirely aquatic, only leaving the water to nest.

I do like the way that the ZSL collections balance the crowd-pleasing animals like tigers and gorillas with strange and beautiful creatures like these.

UPDATE 

Last night  (24th July) ITV broadcast the final episode of their series 'The Zoo'. Shooting for this episode was finished in the weeks after my visit. It showed the adult male magabey shown above: his name is Lucky and he is wild-caught from Ghana. His genes are so important for the future of the species in European zoos that two new females have been added to the group. The main storyline was about the introduction of Kumbuka to the female gorillas, it ended with a sequence when he mated with Mjukuu. Fingers crossed.

That man Man

MAN RAY my favourite photographer

15th April 2013

A long time ago a famous novelist appeared in a TV advertisement. She said “I’m careful what I read. One should never read rubbish, it could be infectious. One might start writing it.” As she picked up a newspaper the message appeared ‘Edna O’Brien reads The Guardian.’ 
I take a similar view of photography, so I'm careful about the photographs I view.

I didn't want to miss the exhibition of Man Ray's portraits at the National Portrait Gallery so I made a special trip to London this week. I admire Man Ray's imagination, his eye for form and detail and some of his technical tricks too. I like the fact that he didn’t take photography too seriously, but as he belonged to the Dada group and then the Surrealists it was just one of the ways he used to express himself. As an artist he painted, wrote, made objects and created films: he took up photography to record works of art and to earn a living. He always had his own ideas, but he took a real interest in other artists and their ideas too, as his portraits show (although he took many other types of photo too).

There were one or two prints that I had seen exhibited before and more that I knew from books, but many of them were quite new to me. It is always interesting to see a photographer’s own prints, in this exhibition there are some little contact prints which are marked for cropping when enlarged. Fortunately I carry a little plastic Fresnel magnifier with my credit cards, so I could examine them quite well.

His ability was made clear in one of the earliest photos on show, a beautifully lit profile of his great friend Marcel Duchamp (who was so important in the rise of modernism) from 1916. There are many other portraits of artists, models and fashions from Paris in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘50s and from Hollywood in the ‘40s. It was nice to see the famous images of Kiki de Montparnasse and Lee Miller again. I was impressed by his ability to capture something more than the formal pose - I now have clear memories of Erik Satie’s chuckle, Lady Diana Cooper’s eyes, Picasso’s hands, the angle of Le Corbusier’s head, Virginia Woolf’s animation in conversation and the poise of Ava Gardner. The photo that I really coveted was a tiny circular colour print of the face and hands of Juliet Greco, it could be kept in a jewelled case like a Hilliard miniature or mass produced as a lapel button.

Man Ray is famous for his so-called solarised portraits, which actually use the Sabattier effect. It is said that he was working in the darkroom with Lee Miller (his assistant and lover at the time) when a mouse ran over her foot and she turned the light on while the plate was in the developer. Man Ray was struck by the effect and learned how to master it. I really liked two beautiful Sabattier portraits of Schiaparelli and Leslie Caron

I bought a print of his famous solarised profile of Lee Miller, which I think is one of the most beautiful photographs ever made, plus a catalogue which I look forward to studying in detail. I thoroughly recommend the exhibition: the links below give a little taste of the master’s work.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/9553243/Man-Ray-National-Portrait-Gallery-stages-first-museum-exhibition-devoted-to-photographers-portraits.html?frame=2344537 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/9818030/Man-Rays-greatest-portraits.html?frame=2458468 

Principally Primates

Another day at Paignton Zoo

28th March 2013

 

Each time I visit a zoo I learn a bit more - it may be about the best time to see an animal or the best place to stand to view or photograph a particular enclosure. I try to remember each point for future visits, but I also keep my eyes open and look for fresh opportunities.
The Allen's swamp monkeys gave me an example. Their enclosure is roughly triangular and is bordered by streams and hotwire barriers, which are good for photography. The island has a large fallen tree trunk and a thick covering of low shrubs (I think it's an evergreen Cotoneaster) where the monkeys spend a lot of time foraging. As I walked up I saw that they were shut outside while a keeper was cleaning their house. The little female kept climbing on top of the tree truck, looking along the path and calling. She was at a nice distance for a shot with my 500mm lens except that I had to look directly into the sun, I had a look through the viewfinder and I saw that the small leaves of the shrubs reflecting the sunlight made an interesting background and the light passing through the long hairs around her head made a partial halo. A purely pictorial effect, but I liked it. The potential problems were catching her mouth open and giving the right exposure to show the details of her face. A quick trial shot and a histogram check showed that my Nikon's exposure was good for this contre-jour lighting, so then it just took patience to shoot a series as she repeatedly returned to her vantage point and called (until another keeper arrived with their feed).

The ability to check exposure and framing is one of the great advantages of digital photography: the photographer's term for this activity is one of my favourites, because looking at your images can be exciting if you happen to see one or two good ones so you naturally make "oo oo" noises, hence the name is chimping :) You just have to try to contain your excitement.

I avoid chimping, but I would be happy to gorilla if I could. My favourite subject 'Kumbuka' was out in spite of the cold. Now that he is a silverback, he has to kept on his own so that he can't challenge the dominant male 'Pertinax' or disturb the hierarchy of the blackback males. He has first use of the island in the morning, but he goes into his den for lunch and the other gorillas go outside in the afternoon. I may be wrong to use the present tense here as he may already have gone to Regents Park to lead London's gorilla group. He is a very handsome animal and he is genetically important as he and his half brother are the only surviving offspring of a wild-caught male, so it would be very welcome if he breeds with 'Effie' and 'Mujukuu'. For various reasons the last three males at ZSL have not been successful, so everyone hopes he will become a good group leader and eventually a father there.

I tried to get contre-jour shots of his breath condensing in the cold air, but it didn't show up well. The alternative was to shoot from the other side of the island with the sun behind me. This shot pleases me, I think because the angle of his head shows the height of his crest and it also allows the light from the sun (still quite low in the sky) to illuminate his eyes.

I think I realised subconsciously that it was primate portrait day. I was soon in Monkey Heights working on the white-faced saki monkeys, this is a subadult (only adult males have white faces). This was shot through very fine mesh, almost at the minimum focus distance for the 500mm. I love this lens because it is very sharp and because it simplifies the composition of the images, making them very direct.

I think this is 'Katya' a female cherry-crowned mangabey. The zoo has a nice group of these attractive monkeys with a newborn infant too. Unfortunately for some reason they have the habit of plucking the red hairs from their crowns, which really spoils their looks. 'Katya' is the only one who has escaped. I love her sweeping whiskers. Shot through green-painted, heavy-gauge wire - but I don't think you can tell from the image. It's a pity I clipped the tips of the hairs on her crown.

I couldn't pass by this grey-winged trumpeter. It had flown up to a perch and it was sunbathing with its wings spread. I managed to include a glimpse of the tuft of blue feathers on the breast of the bird - the only bright colour in its sombre plumage. I have tried to convince myself that I don't mind the tartan background (wire mesh, vegetation and sky) - without complete success.

This shot was a bit of an afterthought near the end of my visit after clouds had obscured the sun. The yellow-shouldered amazon is a real rara avis and I wanted a record shot. The framing was difficult as they were at the back of their aviary and I was shooting between their perches. It's far from brilliant, but I feel that the combination of the individual poses makes it a little more than a record.

Diffuse light from a cloudy sky suits some creatures. I had put the long lens away and just used the 105mm for this shot of a red panda which came quite close to pose. It's easy to overexpose the white face and lose highlight detail in bright sunlight, but this lighting worked nicely and the evergreens in the enclosure provide both foreground and background.

. . . and a little bonus

The ostrich and zebra paddock was very popular with wild birds. Apart from the inevitable herring gulls and wood pigeons, it also attracted magpies, a robin, blackbirds, a song thrush and a splendid pair of mistle thrushes. One of them came well within the range of my 500mm with hastily fitted 1.4x converter.