Short-eared owl watched by human observers

It’s been a bumper year for voles, both in the UK and in Scandinavia where our crop of over-wintering short-eared owls originate. Consequently the owl population seems to have exploded and many of them have flocked to these shores to escape the icy conditions back home.

Short-eared owl in flight

Papercourt Meadows where the owls perform each afternoon is a gloriously serene stretch of the River Wey near Send Marsh, round the back of Ripley village.

Double rainbow over Papercourt Meadow Nature Reserve

Surrey Wildlife Trust graze one of the plots for conservation and the owls appear to like what they find in the grasses.

Short-eared owl montage with prey

With any luck the shorties will be resident with us for the remainder of the winter.

Oak bush-cricket, harvestman and winter moths montage

A particularly interesting creature is the flightless female winter moth, which emerges from the ground and climbs the nearest trunk to liaise with the flighted male moth at altitude. She then lays her eggs high up in the canopy.

Female winter moth climbing oak tree

Male winter moth lying in wait

In a “good” year hundreds of female winter moths may be seen to climb the trunk of one tree in a single night. This is not necessarily good news for the tree however, as the caterpillars rapidly denude the leaves after emerging in the spring.

Taking photos of small wild creatures in the dark presents a few challenges!  To light these subjects I used an LED lamp mounted on a Manfrotto variable friction arm attached to my tripod. This is a lot more predictable than using flash in inhospitable outdoor conditions, but does require a relatively long exposure time. Many of these bugs will freeze in the bright white light required for conventional photography – not necessarily a bad thing for macro work, but it can alter their behaviour in an undesirable way. This young leopard slug was quickly in defensive posture for example, and remained so:

Young leopard slug

It’s also cold, dark and a little spooky in the woods after dark in December, so requires several thermal layers and a degree of commitment!

This was the wintry view from Swyre Head in the Isle of Purbeck looking west to Kimmeridge Bay, and Lulworth beyond, back in December.

This design and others are available to purchase from the Dorset Wildlife Trust’s online shop in packs of 10, with profits going to the charity.

The snow did not settle for long, and by the following afternoon was in rapid retreat.

Juvenile peregrine in flight on clifftops

Durlston Country Park and Nature Reserve is located on the south coast of Dorset just outside Swanage.

I was fortunate enough to be a regular volunteer at Durlston for more than 2 years. This shot was taken on a brief return visit in July of this year, with a Canon EF 100-400mm lens and a bit of luck.

Two peregrines fledged in the area this year and could regularly be seen from the coast path over the summer - alternately terrorising the nesting seabirds on the cliffs below and testing their new wings in mock aerial combat with each other, and with their increasingly unamused parents.

I’ve had good views of hobbies in Dorset before as they pursue their favoured dragonfly food, and whilst it’s reasonably easy to capture them eating their prey mid-flight, snapping the fleeting moment in which they close in and grasp their nimble prey is another matter.

On this particular gloriously warm and sunny September afternoon I sat by the lake shore and waited as a pair of birds arrived from the neighbouring heathland and began one of many bombing runs up and down the lake in front of me.

A handful of shots managed to freeze this aerial ballet between predator and would-be prey for a moment:

When one of the hobbies paused from the fray in the branches of a pine overlooking the lake it was even joined by a sparrowhawk, which must have been studying its technique with some envy:

Hobby and female sparrowhawk

To the victor, the spoils:

Hobby with dragonfly prey

Most of the locals clearly love this precious green (and brown) open space but its close proximity to human habitation regularly puts the heathland flora and fauna at risk from fire and other degradations. The effects of arson in particular, but also the predations of local cats, litter and path erosion present a considerable threat to this Ramsar and SSSI designated site.

The local council in their wisdom recently approved a planning application to extend a housing development in the north, onto farmland which currently serves as a buffer between urban and heathland areas. This decision was controversial for several reasons, but especially because it appeared to override a government directive which prevented new developments within 400m of heathland sites.

The RSPB and other conservation bodies became worried that this development might set a dangerous precedent and the decision eventually went to a Public Inquiry. As part of their submission to the Inquiry I was asked to document the site photographically for the RSPB and their partners at Natural England.

Following 3 visits to the site in late spring 2011 I delivered a library of 300+ selected images, depicting the Talbot Heath landscape, its flora & fauna, human visitors, and urban effects.

Fanned by strong winds, the fire spread rapidly to become the largest heathland blaze in Dorset for decades.

Upton Heath was home to some of the UK’s rarest wild creatures, including the smooth snake, sand lizard and dartford warbler.

Over the following few days I documented the aftermath of the fire for the RSPB and Natural England, with permission of the Dorset Wildlife Trust’s team on-site:

Osprey with fish. Arne, Dorset.

The RSPB’s reserve at Arne lies on the shores of Poole Harbour in Dorset. The ospreys are regular visitors on their migration south to Africa for the winter.

A couple of years ago I experimented with panoramic photos taken through a complete 360 degrees, stitched together, and then animated inside a Flash player to enable the user to scroll left or right and explore different aspects of the view. I incorporated these panoramas into a Google Maps interface, to provide a ‘virtual tour’ experience for the website of a local country park and nature reserve.

More recently I’ve taken this to its logical conclusion and stitched together full spherical panoramas, which not only scroll horizontally through 360 degrees, but also up to a ‘zenith’ in the sky and down to a ‘nadir’ beneath the viewer’s hypothetical feet, through 180 vertical degrees. When viewed in a dedicated Flash or Shockwave player the effect is suitably immersive.

Click the images below to be transported (requires Adobe Shockwave):

RSPB Lodmoor 360° x 180° Panorama

And this wintry scene from RSPB Arne after an unusual snowy spell:

RSPB Arne 360° x 180° Panorama

To make this exercise worthwhile you ideally want plenty of interest in the upper and lower extremities of the scene. Architectural interiors work well for this reason, as do dramatic cloudscapes.

* Shockwave wizardry courtesy of SPi-V - developed by the very talented Aldo Hoeben.

Hundreds of avocets overwinter on the south coast of England in Poole Harbour – the second-largest natural harbour in the world. In autumn they can often be found huddled together in the lagoon on Brownsea Island close to the busy shipping lanes at the harbour entrance. As winter draws on the birds seem to disperse, favouring the more sheltered harbour channels. The Middlebere channel to the south of the Arne peninsula is a particularly popular location.

My main goal on this day was to film and photograph some winter finches along the crop trail managed by the RSPB’s wardens on the Arne Reserve. However it quickly became overcast and I wandered off in the direction of Coombe Heath to see what wading birds were on the Middlebere channel instead. By the time I reached the viewing screens the clouds had cleared and a ‘raft’ of several hundred avocets was beautifully lit in the low winter sun:

Raft of avocets on the Middlebere channel from Arne

Unfortunately the birds moved off before I could set up my tripod for video but one of the RSPB’s wardens kindly pointed out a sheltered spot near the shore where I could get a closer view of their new location.

As I sat and watched the light on the harbour just got better and better with each passing minute. The calls of the waders could be clearly heard in the still air and, as the tide turned, the raft of birds gradually dispersed in my direction, scouring the mud for tasty morsels: