'Les Animaux des Alps'- An Afternoon with Brian Chough

I got a wee confession. I don't speak French. At all. I don't mean i'm bean all self-depricating and modest, I literally cannotstring a sentence together in a coherent fashion, so it may surprise some peopel that I absolutely bloody love France. Partly cos I don't even have to try to explain what the hell i'm doing crawling along the road, or lying in the mud, or sitting on someone's land when I ought'nt to be, or the list could go on. But it won't.

But I really like France for the meadows. But Joe, I hear you ask in my head (I should probably get that checked out), we have perfectly good meadows here don't we? But you're wrong, so wrong. You haven't seen a meadow if you ain't seen the ones of the continental hills, meadows as far as you can see, as far up the hills as they go (OK up to the snow line).

And so when my family decided to do the Tour de Mont Blanc I was prepared to fight tooth and nail to get my camera gear into our modest allowance of stuff to carry. It was always going to be an ask for me to take a full DSLR camera kit, so I stripped it back quite a bit, just to the 'bare essentials':

Canon 50D
Sigma 120-400mm
Canon 18-55mm
Extender tubes (c.100mm)
Milk-bottle Diffuser

And so the stage is set, the players cast and my rucksack altogether more heavily laden than it has any right to be. Let the TMB begin! Wait no, we won't do a conventional chronological report, that'd be boring. Besides, introducing the creatures of 'la montagnes' one at a time will allow for more elaboration. Yes, i'll do that. And I'll start with my favourite of all the alpine birds, the Alpine Chough...



Chough, for me at least, evoke hours of waiting patiently waiting on the paths at South Stack for one to happen upon me. They are accomodating, incredibly so at times, though I find that when I actively try and approach one they're less complient. I think it must be something to do with their intelligence, they know when they're being stalked.

But this time I found them, or rather they found me. On our way round the TMB they were one of the commonest birds we encountered, often flocking up in excess of one hundred birds. However, my first extended views of one up close were at Col du Bonhomme (Bonne Homme? Good Man? Maybe 'Gentleman'? Says the guy who doesn't speak French), as one spiralled up from the snowy, glaciated valley below...



...but the refuge at Croix du Bonhomme (the 'Cross of the Gentleman'? Could the 'Bonhomme' be Jesus?) proved to be far more fruitful for these charasmatic birds. They're strictly monogamous and bond for life, which can be seen in the way you either see family groups or pairs. Here below the refuge the Chough had learned to take food, so I could watch them flying away or in to feed their babies. Their squabbly, raspy tones became a good indicator of an incoming bird...



...now i'm something of a BiF puritan and a pedant; birds in flight should, in my view, be against an interesting backdrop. That means I don't like birds against a brilliant blue sky. But as the stormclouds rolled in for the night that mix of shiny black and dulled greys combined with an afternoon sun prompted me to take a rare 'bird against the sky' shot...



...and as the 'exception that proves the rule', here's another one...!



...and as the light fades you've only got one option; go all arty-farty. Well these birds are really quite acrobatic, perhaps I should add a photo that emphasises this point...?



...some people will have just have inadvertently dribbled on their keyboards in awe of the sheer artiness and unprecedented fartiness of that shot (go wipe it up before anyone sees it), others, like me, consider it an abomination and don't consider it a 'proper' photo. So they you have it, a perfect storm in a teacup.

But believe it or not these birds do spend some time on the ground, not that you'd know from my meagre photographic record. But they do, and I can prove it...!



...Lovely flowers too. But over much of Choughland (as I've renamed the Savoie Alps) the terrain is a little less rich, as this portrait kinda shows...



...or this one...



...but some Chough are tamer than others and the birds at Lac Blanc were the tames i've ever encountered. I'm just saying 55mm and soft cheeses, nothing else...



...actually sod the cloak and dagger, these birds came in on our picnic and in true stingy British fashion we allowed them the rind of some cheese to eat. This lead to some utterly privileged views...



...with the Lac in the background...



...in flight, again its against the blue sky but I excuse this with the crazy trippy sun in the top left...



...back to the wide-angle stuff, with the Massif du Mont Blanc in the background...



...and to end it all, a bird with Lac Blanc in the background. These birds have pretty much made my summer, I am (to quote the wee aliens in Toy Story) 'Eternally Grateful...'

Gulls on Steroids

My blog, my blog, why have you forsaken me? OK it doesn't work (I update it not the other way around) but nonetheless there's been something of a hiatus from posting. Something about AS levels, I wasn't really listening. So I'm back, i've got some photies (i've been in Scotland, that's how they say it round there) and here's a post. I was going to do some more Mull stuff, but I can't be bothered trying to remember so i'll go with something more recent...

Of late i've been something of a vagrant, i've wandered over Manchestor and the UK generally in search of, well, nothing really. But spent a belting three days up in Scotland, the details of which I will regail the discerning reader with in due time, but for now some pure, unadulterated action from my most favourite inshore small island in Sutherland: Handa!

So imagine a really sunnny coupl'a days (hard isn't it? Perhaps try looking out the window for inspiration), then the day you head over to an exposed island it all goes decidedly rainy. Well that's what happened to our Handa trip, we arrived on the island and soon the sky was doing its best to turn Handa into a quagmire and me into a photographer with a broken camera. This Wheatear seemed to sum up my mood rather well...



...but luckily rain is something we Manks are used to, so I carried on regardless with the day. The cliffs were teeming as usual, as a photographer the gauntlet is always thrown down over getting close to birds, but at distance and with so many subjects it makes sense to take a step back and include the whole vista...



...but what Handa is renowned for are the Great Skuas, or Bonxies. The UK holds over 50% of the global population of these birds, and they're invariably found around smaller birds due to their piratical habits. They will force birds to sick up or drop any catch they might make then eat it, so as one can imagine they're not the prettiest of birds to look at...



...but there is beauty in design, they are superbly evil looking cretures...



...more elegant are their cousins, the scarcer Arctic Skuas. If boxies are born thugs I like to think that Arctic Skuas are assassins...





...but as the day brightened we set off with the wardens to inspect nests. This was particularly exciting with the Bonxies who are 'territorial' to say the least, here's my uncle Mark making his blog debut shortly before avoiding a clobbering...



...when you see them this close you can appreciate their aerial mastery...



...But we also got to see the rather adorable chicks. These are very young, no more than a week old, and still possessing an egg-tooth. So this was an incredibly special encounter, just as the sun came out too...





...and as we left the island we saw the final speciality, the Arctic Tern...



So an ace day in all, and some pretty special encounters. This is birding at its best, perhaps over the next month I can show you some more photos from the last 2 months! :)

'The Mountains Afar', Mull 2013- Part I

Lord Byron once wrote of Scotland that

'England thy beauties are tame and domestic

To one who has roved on the mountains afar'

Now I don't know Byron all that well (given that he's dead) but from his writing I can only assume he's never visited central Manchester on a Friday night. Yes one walk down Oxford Road on a Friday night would indeed confirm England's beauties are not tame. Nor are they domestic. But I suppose we can give him a little poetic licence, for indeed there is nowhere where the couplet is more true than the Isle of Mull.

You catch the boat out from Oban harbour to get there, a small CalMac job but more than adequate for the island's handful of inhabitants. There are probably more sheep than people. There are certainly more fish, in the farms moored offshore in the Sea Lochs. We were bound for a holiday on the north side of Loch Na Keal in central Mull, of Sea Eagle fame and featured on so many photography websites I won't bother naming any of them. Still, as the sun set over the loch we arrived.

I do not want to do a conventional trip report, a blow-by-blow account of what i've done on the island. Instead I shall write by classification. I shall perhaps do two or three posts, but lets start with one. I want to look at the Loch itself, something inescapable when I look back on my time on Mull, probably because it was right in front of me for a lot of the time. Maybe its something deeply ingrained in my being. But its probably the former.

We visited in April, a time that is traditionally a time of green shoots and newborn lambs, but March decided to forego the whole 'in like a Lion, out like a lamb' thing and decided it was best just to be a Lion the whole time. So there weren't so many spring visitors, but an abundance of winter ones. One of the most common was the Great Northern Diver, a bird assosiated with the high arctic in the summer and the British coast in the winter. As they swam in the Loch where the water reflects the mountainside they looked particularly elegant...

...but in the evenings I noticed some behaviour i'd never seen before in Divers, rafting. This is when many birds gather together in a huddle on the sea. But Divers are nearly always singletons, or at best are found in small groups. Therefore the sight of 27 one evening was something of a surprise...

They're never found close to the shore under normal conditions, so I had to make do with these distance views. But nice views of what is a bird of which I know very little. One day on Mull we did indeed go on the now famous boat the Lady Jayne in seach of Sea Eagles. The Sea Eagles of Loch Na Keal have become local celebrities and every morning the Lady Jayne's procession up the loch is watched from the shore by birders and locals alike, waiting for the eagle to come along. The setup is this: the boat sets off into the Loch and on the way picks up a small army of gulls which feed on bits thrown over the side. The flock attracts the eagle's attention and when the partner returns to take over nest duties the bird comes out. However, whilst waiting for this happy event I did get some decent images of Common Gulls, not something I often photograph...

...but the reals star was yet to arrive. About two hours passed of chatting and drinking tea, the latter for me leathal and I ended up below decks soon enough, not to put too fine a point on it. Whilst I was below the shout went up that an Eagle had just been seen, so I rushed up to see a large speck coming our way. The way this works is that the Eagle comes for a fish, takes it and then leaves. However, it first did a pass overhead...

...and then he's steep into a dive. Now i've seen Osprey dive, and this fella is so much bigger with such massive wings that surely he can't match the Osprey for speed? But he can, oh he can...

 But its one of those moments i'm sure all film-makers and photographers get when they're completely detatched from the action are 'watching' but not 'observing' the subject, everything's light, apeture and shutter speeds. But sometimes the shot just comes off and you're grateful, especially with a burst of images at 171mm of which 2 are usable...

...but then he's gone off to eat his snack, and this is the reason he's not tame. He really isn't arsed what's going on aboard the boat, he won't take any crap and won't 'perform', what he will take is a fish and he'll take it first time. Then bugger off. Yea.

But then you're off home and the day's light is all but spent. It was at this point I indulged my need to revise and work for my A Levels. But in the evening as night falls it is the time of the landscape photographer, and well, it would be rude not to attempt a few 'birdscapes', like this Red Breasted Merganser against the Isle of Staffa...

...and then night falls. As I say i've never seen Scottish weather like this, so i've also never seen the Milky Way in its entirety ever. But by God its pretty good out there on the Hebrides, so I tried a star trail or two over the loch. This one's over Ben More...

...So a day out on Loch Na Keal ain't bad is what i'm saying. This is quite a broad-based photography approach, prehaps next time i'll do something more 'species specific'. but I dunno.

A Regent's Treat

Oh what a pun that is! Try reading it back, try it on your friends and bask in its comedic glory! Don't know whether you can tell but i'm quite pleased with myself, this way with words must be a direct result of my time in the capital for that is the reference of the title. I found myself of a Tuesday in Regent's Park looking for the Bearded Tits that were resident, only to find they'd flown literally that morning. In fact, I can't believe my bad luck. Still, the birds were excellent despite the lack of rarities, no more was this true than with the excellent Heronry that is on the island there...

...that's a young bird by the way, unusual to see one breeding so early in life...

...but up close in the dying light you can see their Dinosaur origins...

...but the very same light sets the cloudy water on fire of an evening...

....The amazing thing is how easy it is to get close to the ducks, they're so acclimatised to the good folk of London they're not adverse to the odd Manc...!

...in short, a nice trip to a nice park. Wish we had such a park in Manchester. Whitworth ain't bad I suppose. But its so busy down there, not for me.

On Glassen Waters...

Its one of those things that is generally accepted about photography, that there are certain places to see certain species. Now I tend to have to avoid these places, these places tend to be a long way from the railway line and civilisation in general, so it is only when I have the help of others that I get out to these species-specific sites. This was the case towards the end of last month as I had a weekend in Wales, I managed to get out to photograph a rather confused bird.

Now that last statement may require some clarification; clarification I am more than happy to give. The word for a male 'Goose' is a 'Gander', whilst a female is referred to as, well, a 'Goose'. As a result, it is surprising to see a bird called a Goosander, they're not hemaphrodites as far as I can see! The Goosander Gander (if I can call them that) is well renowned as the hardest bird to expose. Ever. White on the bottom, green on the top. Now I love that bottle green and the salmon-cream white of the underside, but trying to get them both the correct colour, jeez. But hey ho I had a go, have a look fer yourselves...

...and the full body shot...

...now take the next one with a pinch of salt, its an arty effort...

...gettin' down low...

...the fable male...underexposed...

...and the flappy shot...

...all in all a top morning out, hopefully get down there again soon!

Down and Out in Manchester and Rhyl

Well the other weekend I was on a train to Rhyl, not quite what I wanted as it was late in the day and an indirect route, but it was nice to be out for the day. However, it quickly turned nasty as the train was told to turn round due to flooding, so it was a similar scenario this weekend as I sped along the tracks as the morning mist cleared on my way to Bae Cinmel in North Wales.

The name Kinmel Bay has become synonymous with top quality Snow Bunting pictures due to the feeding of the birds by locals and visitors alike, so with me I brought a half kilo of seed by way of a sacrifice to the gods of photography to allow me some nice views. It was however disappointing to arrive and not find any area already seeded, so I effectively started 'from scratch'. I did however soon have 12 birds feeding, a good number and with some very handsome males in the mix. It was not long before they started moving my way, although it wasn't long before a dog walker came either, putting the birds up and me back to square one. I however knew they'd be back, so sat it out and waited for their return...

...That low, early morning winter sun really helps here...

...Red Alert! Dog Walker...!

...But its not all Buntings on the seeded patch, this Meadow Pipit has grown bold with the extensive disturbance and as a result has become quite tame...

...even down to eye-level...

...and that bit of luck required to get something more special...

...but soon the bunts were back and my attention drawn away from this unobtrusive LBJ...

...a stunning male struts his stuff...

...this one appears to be trying to hide...!

...and as the light faded and the train rolls into Rhyl station i'm off again, the sun setting behind me casting great long shadows across the sands of the Dee. The crags and contours of Hilbre are picked out in the glorious technicolour of the dying sun and, once again, I'm reminded that it ain't all that bad a life