Wild Imaging Blog

Garden macros

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:53:00 +0000

As well as an explosion in baby birds in the garden there has been a bumper crop of small insects. Of course this is no coincidence with many birds targeting this season in order to have plenty of baby food on hand. To get enough flexibility with magnification, working distance and shutter speed I've been using the Sigma 150mm macro lens combined with various extension tubes and a 1.4x teleconverter together with a Canon 430EX flash and diffuser on a side bracket. It all makes for a rather unwieldy bit of kit and I often use it on a monopod to aid steadiness.

This is a crop from a shot of a fly to show the compound eyes. As well as seeing amazing detail, it's been possible to watch all sorts of interesting things happening like for example watching ants 'milking' aphids as the shot below demonstrates.

Closer to Home

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:56:00 +0000

This has been a good few months for the garden wildlife. Amongst the less common birds we have had a female blackcap for most of the winter and then a male turned up as she left. Several brambling spent a month or so with us and we had transient visits from siskin and a redpoll. Now with spring well under way the garden is well supplied with fairly tame babies of various species.

In the fields opposite the house the rabbits are doing what rabbits do best and I've never seen such numbers! They also seem fairly accustomed to people coming and going and I hope for some nice pictures in due course.

Isle of Skye

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:34:00 +0000

I've now put up a few pictures from our trip to Skye in April. We had high hopes of otters and eagles and between the eight of us we did in fact see both although I was the only one with a distant sighting of an otter and none of the eagles was close enough for a firm id.

The scenery was dramatic and made all the more beautiful (and chilly) by the addition of a decent amount of snow from our first 2 days on the island. For some more pictures from the Skye trip, enter Skye into the search box below and click the button. I hope to add more pictures later and will make the landscapes a bit larger.

Barn owl video

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:08:00 +0000

Yesterday I came across a video on YouTube about a family of barn owls. This documents a truly amazing feat of rearing a brood during the wettest UK summer on record. Apparently they seldom venture out in the rain so hunting time must have been greatly reduced. You can check it out here.