Wild Ocean Photography

I have just added a link to my links page for
Wildlife and coastal images of Scotland by Rosanna Milligan
http://www.wildoceanphotography.com

Rosanna has some impressive underwater images from off the west coast which are well worth viewing.

While on the subject of links, can anyone reading this who has a link to photo-tech on their web site please change it to connect to the
wildlife surveys index page
or whichever page they feel is most relevant.

Trees for Life

I love trees and mountains, and trees are something there is precious little of in Scotland's Highlands, except for isolated remnants of the old Caledonian Pine Forest and modern plantations; but if Trees for Life is successful, then future generations may once again enjoy the Wood of Caledon.
Trees for Life's Vision

Back to the hills of dream

Well, that was a long four months and anyone keeping an eye on me will know that the old web site has gone, never to return.


I don't really want to talk about what's been happening since I last blogged other than to say that I'm pretty pissed off with boats, governments, EU legislation, banks and anything else that sucks blood.












Me and the dog Kali are stuck with a boat that's going nowhere soon, licking wounds and contemplating a singular lack of resources. Still, no point in being downhearted, life goes on and all that shit.


Anyway, the hills are getting us back. I've decided to pick up where I left off over two years ago with the Highland Red Suirrel survey and wildlife photography. The boat's a cheap place to live for the moment and hopefully, when the countries economy starts to climb out of recession and people have got over the recent massive hike in fuel prices, I might find someone who's interested in buying it. The time can't come too soon for me. As Jeremiah Johnson said, in the film of the same name, "I've been to a city".


Don't get me wrong, Inverness has it's good points. It's just that I'm not very good with crowds. I like to wake up to forests, mountains, the wind in the trees and birds singing; not all this shit called civilisation with sirens, engines, drunks and idiots fighting and shouting.

It's time to get the f**k out of Dodge.

I'll start posting my normal stuff as soon as I've calmed down a bit. See you later.

In memory of a good friend

On the 28th February 2007, Iain Everson who was a very good friend, passed away suddenly.

He is warmly remembered and sadly missed, especially by his daughters, Michelle and Heidi and his partner Heidi Goehrke who has recently launched a photographic and digital art web site of work they did together; which can be seen at http://vitualeyes.co.uk/

Iain and I were from farming backgrounds with similar interests and occupations. When life eventually introduced us to each other, back in 1998, we were to discover that we had been following a weirdly parallel course since the 1970's knowing a lot of the same people, all the way from Oxford to Inverness.

I wish Iain could have stayed around to see us finish the boat refit, so that he and Heidi could have enjoyed it with us; but that was not meant to be.

There's obviously more to the story but this isn't the place. Suffice to say bon voyage mon ami.

Wildlife Online

http://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/

This is an excellent site for wildlife reference created by Marc Baldwin in Southampton, England.

Marc has worked hard to develope Widlife Online over the last few years and being qualified in the natural sciences enables him to provide data in an informed and authorative context.

I'm sure that as the project continues Wildlife Online will become a well recognised resource and would recommend the site to anyone searching for good wildlife info' on the net.

The Hills of Dream

The tide of noon is upon the hills.
Amid leagues of purple heather, of pale amethyst ling, stand isled great yellow-lichened granite boulders, fringed with tawny bracken.

In the vast dome of blue there is nought visible save a speck of white, a gannet that drifts above the invisible sea. And through the hot tide of noon goes a breath as of the heart of flame.

Far off, far off, I know dim hills of dream, and there my heart suspends as a white bird longing for home: and there, oh there, is a heart of flame, and the breath of it is as the tide of noon upon these hills of dream.

Fiona Macleod
From the Hills of Dream - 1902

Red Deer Hind

The Red Deer hind was browsing on heath under a cloud of midges and I was camode up on the edge of the bog waiting for a Roe buck when the hind came quietly out from the forests edge.

She was there for a fair time when there was a change of wind direction and she caught my scent, which put her head up (the moment of this shot); but she couldn't figure out where I was. After some hesitation she decided to go back into the trees and drifted off, still testing the air.

I'd been in one position for long enough and had more or less given up on the buck so I stood up. When my head cleared the bracken there was a crash to the right about thirty feet away and I was greeted with the sight of the retreating rear end of the Roe Buck I'd been waiting to see.

Seems to be the way of it with me and Roe deer. I've missed some fantastic shots and never, so far, managed to get one I would want to publish. It'll happen right one of these days and the red hind made it worth the effort on this occasion.

Wild Mountain Thyme

Apparently not Irish in origin as has been suggested but a Scottish song based on Pailsey poet R Tannahill's song The Braes of Balquidder.

This video of The Silencers performing Wild Mountain Thyme was directed by Steve price with Photography by John Brown in 1996 and shot around Lochranza on the Isle of Arran.







Ther are 28 videos of performances of Wild Mountain Thyme on the tube and much as I like such as The Corries I keep coming back to The Silencers.



I was inspired to add this after visiting http://roonthehoosemindthedresser.blogspot.com/



I think it's great and makes you home sick when you're at home.

Free Screen backgrounds

Free wildlife and wilderness screen backgrounds to download

Just click on an image to view full size in a new window.



Whooper Swans on Loch Achonachie



Red Deer Stag browsing Strathconon hillside in winter

Red Deer stag with 10 point antlers in velvet

Looking west up Strathconon Glen in Easter Ross

Looking south down Loch Lochy in the Great Glen



Oystercatcher flight across Cromarty Bay



Atlantic Puffin in the rain on Handa Island.

These images can be downloaded for personal use.

The images are 1440 x 900 pixels at 96ppi and the average size is about 100Kb. They work perfectly on a wide screen laptop and can be sampled and downloaded directly from the page in seconds.

I hope you enjoy them.

Wildlife on Principal

I've always been driven by a desire to portray wild life forms, undisturbed in their natural habitat and I consider it a great privilege when I have the opportunity to observe animal behaviour in its natural environment. I have never photographed animals in any form of captivity, restraint or distress.

I hunt quietly and unobtrusively with a camera and if I can't get a shot there will always be another time.

Having got that off my chest I'll briefly explain my attitude. I grew up on my Father's farm in the 1950s when life was very different from today. Hunting, shooting and fishing were very much a part of life and I certainly did my fair share of each. My boyhood dream was to be a gamekeeper and it wasn't until I became one that I realised it was the lifestyle and environment that attracted me rather than the shooting of game. Along with numerous disagreements with the head keeper about just what level of threat some of the so called vermin species really constituted to a pheasant reared in captivity, the proverbial straw was the issue of pole traps around rearing pens.

For the benefit of readers who don't know how it worked, pheasant chicks were hatched under broody hens in closed and protected cages. When they were old enough they were transferred to rearing pens in the estate forests where they were afforded a degree of protection prior to full release in the autumn. In those days it was the practise of some to set juby traps on the tops of the fence poles. These traps are a pair of sprung metal jaws with a release plate at their centre and anything landing on it was caught by the legs and found hanging upside down from the top of the pole the next morning.

I was taught that when contemplating an action likely to affect something else, I should first think about it from the something else's point of view and decide if it was a reasonable plan of action. Well I can't speak for others but I don't think I would want to spend any amount of time hanging like that and as the only thing these traps ever seemed to catch were Owls; which are not the remotest threat to pheasants of that age, I could see no justification for the practise and said so.

Well, my days as a gamekeeper were numbered and I eventually moved on; but the value of the lesson was a respect for all life forms. Don't get the impression that I'm some airhead in green wellies who thinks everybody should live on carrots because I'm not. I don't have a problem with deer stalking, fishing etc., either as population control or for the pot but I don't see killing anything as a sport and I don't see captive wild animals as an easy photo' opportunity.

New Horizons

I've been anchored in front of this PC for several weeks doing a complete overhaul of my web site presentation, it's organisation and products; and at long last I'm ready to launch.

Over the last few years I've allowed myself to get distracted from my original objectives when I first set up the web site. 2002 seems a long time ago but still only yesterday, and a lot of unexpected changes have since occurred, not all of which were particularly welcome at the time. Looking on the brighter side, we have new circumstances and opportunities which didn't exist before and I hope that 2008 will see us able to make the most of them.

The new print collections will all be available to view by the end of January and for the future I will be photographing and writing about a combination of wildlife, wilderness, red squirrels and our adventures on the water, once I've completed work on the boat engines this spring.

The boat is a whole other story which I'll be saying more about later.

I hope you enjoy looking at the new print galleries and maybe buy the odd print.

Ron Bury - Highlands and Islands of Scotland