Eric & Lesley's Wildlife Blog

Butterfly Time

8/7/2021

It's July now and the birds are off the menu. They have no reason to show themselves unless they have a second brood. The vegetation is as high as an elephant's eye. Insects are the order of the day.
Technically there's a challenge that comes with insects. Because they are so small there's little depth of field. Sometimes that's a good thing - a long telephoto exploits that fact. However with macro you have difficulty in getting even the whole insect in focus. With butterflies that results in two styles of picture. Top view or side view. In this way the whole subject is in the same plane. This is a Northern Brown Argus, a local species. The subject has chosen to offer me the side view.

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Hawkeye

8/3/2020

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Just back from a week's photography in Sweden. We had hoped for some weather i.e. snow and frost to enhance the pictures. In fact we had only a couple of days of that kind of weather. A fair amount of drizzle though.
That said, we had a series of highlights with five raptors, including two eagles photographed, plus three Owl species. To get the raptor pictures we spent over 40 hours in hides. If you include travelling time it would be around 50 hours to get a series of pleasing images.
The Owl highlight was a Hawk Owl. This winter there are a few present; they are certainly entertaining the local birders and photographers. This Hawk Owl was finding food easily enough since it was caching the food for later.

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The Bald One

12/10/2019

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Last month we made a shortish trip to Morocco. After landing in Marrakesh we travelled east close to the border with Algeria. This gave us an opportunity to spend a day in the Sahara where the bird life is adapted to Desert - Desert Sparrow, Desert Warbler, Desert Wheatear. You get the picture. Later we travelled west, across the whole breadth of the country to Agadir. There we found the highlight of the trip - the Northern Bald Ibis (pictured). Once widespread through much of Europe, hence alternative name of Waldrapp, it became confined to a small area around Agadir. Conservation efforts in Morocco and elsewhere have brought it back from the brink. It is merely "Endangered" now. This one is an adult walking though the scrub and feeding. Much of the food comprise snails.

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Butterfly Time

Hawkeye

The Bald One

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