Month: April 2022

If wildlife photography is a battle of wits between the photographer and the subject, then some birds seem to specialise in making you look particularly stupid.

The worst culprit in my neck of the woods? Time for the wily jay to step briefly out of the shadows and take a sneaky bow.

In theory, getting shots of these birds should be a breeze. There are plenty of them (170,000 breeding territories in the UK, according to the RSPB). By woodland bird standards, they’re pretty big. They’re also quite gaudily coloured, with a flashy white rump and a gorgeous patchwork of black and blue on the wing.

What’s more, they positively advertise their presence. Their scientific name – Garrulus glandarius – gives you a hefty clue. I rarely walk through our local woods without hearing them conversing garrulously and loudly with each other.

Seeing them is one thing – getting a half-decent image is another. They’re members of the crow family, which means they’re intelligent, resourceful and wary.

The best bet is usually to wait patiently at a woodland feeding station, like the one at Cromwell Bottom, and hope that they’ll break cover to come and raid the nuts.

If you prefer to get a “proper” wild shot, you end up spending an awful lot of time pointing your lens at a shadowy figure moving about in faraway treetops, before your subject flies off into the distance with a gloating cackle and a derisory flash of that white rump.

All of these frustrations make your occasional victories in the battle of wits so much sweeter.

The odds were stacked against me today – a sunny Sunday morning when the woods were full of dog walkers. Surely no self-respecting jay was going to venture anywhere near the footpath?

A squawk from down in the wooded ravine…a bit of hopping about in the branches of a fallen tree just out of camera range…then a neat disappearing act. It was all going perfectly according to Plan Jay.

But then this most elusive of birds actually popped up in a mossy tree fork a few metres away from me and stuck around long enough for me to fire off several shots. You could have knocked me down with a black and blue wing feather.

I’m claiming this as 1-0 to the photographer…before we return to the usual routine of avian triumphs.

Fans of the BBC drama series Gentleman Jack will recognise the Shibden Valley as the place through which the 19^th century heroine Anne Lister strides purposefully on her various forays from her home at Shibden Hall.

It’s steeped in history and gloriously scenic – and it’s also great for wildlife. I’ve seen green and great spotted woodpeckers, buzzards, kestrels, whitethroats and a host of other birds there.

The highlight of this morning’s brief walk was one of my favourite woodland birds – a chiffchaff. In some milder parts of the UK, these little leaf warblers can be seen all year round. Not being fans of West Yorkshire’s horizontal sleet, our local birds tend to head off to Africa for the winter.

Their return in early March is one of the first signs of spring, which they herald by singing their own name loudly and somewhat monotonously.

True to form, I heard this morning’s chiffchaff before I saw it. These birds like to sing while flitting around at the top of trees, so trying to find the source of that song often involves a lot of neck-craning and wobbly camera-pointing at a tiny shape silhouetted against the sky.

Here’s where Shibden really comes into its own. It’s a steep-sided valley, used for lung-busting hill climbs in the Tour de Yorkshire cycle race. Its topography means you often find yourself at a vantage point where you can look across at – or even down on – the treetops.

So today Mr Chiffchaff was happily blasting out his somewhat limited repertoire at the top of a hawthorn tree, while providing me with a scenic background and allowing me to photograph him without having to lie on my back and hold my lens at a crazy angle.

And we even managed to avoid being disturbed by any energetic figures in black top hats wielding walking canes.

I departed from my usual route this morning, branching off into a quieter part of the woods that I hadn’t explored for a while.

It’s a steep descent, followed by an equally steep climb on a path that wends through sun-dappled glades decorated with bluebells – at their glorious best on bright spring days like this. There was plenty of birdsong, punctuated by the occasional louder burst from a wren, but otherwise it was a pretty tranquil scene.

Suddenly, the peace was shattered by a commotion on the opposite side of the ravine from me. Two roe deer appeared, running hell-for-leather along the side of the valley. They can reach speeds of 37mph, according to the Woodland Trust. These two may not have been going quite that fast, but they were managing to slalom athletically through the trees at a hell of a pace. As they ran, they made a loud barking noise, like a dog with a sore throat.

Strangely, after a short distance, they turned round and sprinted back in the same direction.

So what was it that spooked this pair so much? Roe deer have no natural predators in the UK, and I couldn’t see anyone – or anything – else around. Maybe I was the culprit, although I do try to adopt the wildlife photographer’s motto of “walk softly and carry a big lens,” and I was a fair distance away on the opposite side of the ravine.

It was very different from my usual encounters with roe deer in my more familiar parts of the woods. Only yesterday, I spent about ten minutes filming a doe from about 25 metres away. She was aware of my presence and broke off from feeding every now and then to have an inquisitive look at me, before eventually sauntering off through the trees at a sedate pace.