And so it is onwards with my journey of experiences from A to Z of my time thus far with RSPB Cymru…
I is for … Images
I have often wondered what kind of bird watcher am I. I know I am not a twitcher, as I know I would not get any pleasure from dashing across the country to see a small non-descript bird land on a bowling green in Torquay. Each to their own of course and I do keep personal lists, but they are just to satisfy my own inner geek on what I have seen each year.
I own a scope, which I rarely use if I am honest. That is not to say I don’t like using it, and it certainly helps you pick out individual species in a mixed flock.
The simple truth is I love photographing wildlife, and part of the reason I love doing this is because I want to share all that I see with a wide audience. My Flickr image collection currently stands at nearly five and a half thousand images. Not all of them are wildlife photographs. I have a love of concert photography and some of my rugby images I am particularly proud of. I would say about ninety per cent of them are of British wildlife.
I have written a daily photo blog for nearly one thousand, four hundred and sixty consecutive days, or three years, and a lot of those blogs are on Welsh wildlife. It was those photo blogs that led directly to me becoming an RSPB blogger. I have, of course, favourites in all those images, which brings me neatly on to the letter J …
J is for … Jay
It was a bit obvious really!
What a magnificent bird the Jay is. It looks like a bird that has been made from the bits not used from making other birds. It’s incredibly attractive when seen in the flesh, and like all corvids, incredibly intelligent. One of the best birds to photograph there is.
I rarely “set up” photos. I get far more pleasure from just capturing that moment by pure chance. Yes you can position yourself in the right place to give yourself a far better chance of getting the shot you want, but these are wild spirits and you cannot control or direct them. The photo shown here was staged, but it took advantage of the Jay’s penchant for caching food. The figures for the amount of acorns a Jay will cache each autumn are staggering. One Jay can cache up to five thousand acorns in a season, if you multiply that up by the number of Jays that reside in the UK each autumn it equates to a mind blowing sixteen billion acorns!
I didn’t have a few thousand acorns handy for the photo, so I opted for the Jay’s other love, peanuts. It took several days, a lot of peanuts and a lot of near misses to finally capture the image I wanted. It was fascinating to watch the Jay stuff its crop and then fly off to the nearby Oak tree and hide the nuts away for later. This meant it would have a supply of food for when times got harder, and it also meant it could eat them in the safety of the tree, rather than out in the open where it may face predation from the fox or the local Sparrowhawk pair. It was great fun setting up the photo and just being so close to the bird, and gaining its trust.
K is for … Kite
If getting the Jay photo took a week, ticking the Red Kite photograph off the bucket list simply took one afternoon, but it was another afternoon I won’t forget. I had wanted to visit a Red Kite feeding station for a while, but whenever I had the time the weather would be against me. To photograph the birds I wanted a good clear and sunny day so I could get fast enough shutter speeds to freeze the action.
I had learnt of the Llanddeusant feeding station whilst I was at the Welsh Ornithological Conference a couple of years back. I had vowed to return, and eventually I did.
Red Kites epitomise the success of reintroduction of a species more than any other bird. With just a few birds left in the UK, and Wales being one of the last strongholds it was decided to bring in birds from Scandinavia. The result has been incredible. Since I wrote my original blog on my visit I am very pleased and proud to say, that here in Tonyrefail I am now seeing a pair of these magnificent birds of prey. I really hope they are a breeding pair. I remember as a small child that we used to see Buzzards, Red Kites and Kestrels around here. Until the Red Kites re-appeared all we had left were Buzzards. If only the Kestrel would return now I would be a very happy man indeed!
There are a number of feeding stations around Wales, and if you have never been I recommend that you do. The sound the birds make as they swoop in to collect the food left for them is worth any fee for being in the hide. You will be very lucky indeed to get better views of this stunning raptor!
All Images © Anthony Walton
I was saddened to hear of the death of Sue Townsend, creator of fictional diarist Adrian Mole, this morning (11th April). Sue’s books were a major influence on me when I was a teenager, and they inspired to me to keep a diary. My own diaries directly led me into the world of micro blogging, which directly led to me blogging on this website. It is in her memory and that of Adrian Moles that I dedicate this blog. – Anthony.