April 26th 2016 and this is the first youngster in our garden this year. Baby robin, weighing in at just a few ounces, and parent seem to be doing well.
It’s 7th April, the weather is a bit mixed and cold so I decided to set up my camera in the bedroom window and have my very own ‘big garden birdwatch’. You can see some of the images on ‘my big garden birdwatch’ post, showing a male bullfinch as the…
I can almost set my calendar by the mallards’ arrival to our garden. The same pair turned up the day before yesterday and almost immediately emptied the ground feeders and churned up the pond to a murky dark grey. They’ve been coming for eight years, arriving every March and leaving in…
A couple of days ago , we found a dead sparrow hawk under the apple tree in our garden. It had no obvious sign of injury and I wondered if it had hit the tree in its rapid flight into the garden. Strange. Usually, birds we find dead in the garden have…
I’m in Sri Lanka at present, sitting by a pool, relaxing after climbing the 5th century Sigiriya Rock fortress, which was ok because it was raining and all the birds were hiding. We spent the last two days at Wilpattu national park where the roads are so bad you have…
Thanks to everyone who bought one of my 2016 Worldwide Wildlife calendars, I will be sending £200 to WaterAid and thanks to the UK government who will match the donation. With gift aid and the government’s contribution, WaterAid will receive a total of £450. Happy Christmas to everyone! Ray
Birders and photographers in the UK will often travel miles to see a single osprey. I’m lying in my bed in a nice little apartment on Sanibel Island on Florida’s Gulf coast and outside in a tall palm tree is an osprey nest. Just up the road is another. Sanibel…
Last year, I spent a morning at Stainforth Force on the River Ribble, hoping to get some decent shots of the salmon leaping the falls on their way to their spawning grounds. My visit was not particularly successful since there were few fish performing and those that did, didn’t perform to…
Having enjoyed Svalbard so much last year, we decided, this year, to take a cold cruise with Fred to Norway, Spitsbergen, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. (For those not in the cruising community, ‘Fred’ is Fred Olsen, referred to by his first name by those faithfuls who are proud to…
I had the chance to join three other guys at the River Gwash trout farm near Rutland Water, this morning, to photograph ospreys. I’d been to Rothiemurchus in the Cairngorms last year and enjoyed a few hours alone in a hide, catching a couple of birds fishing. Another opportunity within…