Eurasian Woodcock - Scolopax rusticola - Acorn 6210MC

Fig 1.   Frame one of set

I was checking cameras today and discovered this Woodcock had rather conveniently worked its way through the frame, while looking for food in the ground litter. These beautiful birds are not often seen during the day, unless disturbed, but this far north we have about twenty hours of daylight at this time of the year; so many creatures more associated with the night will be active, on and off, throughout the day.

Fig 2.   Frame two of set

The camera was set to shoot three stills and a video on each trigger and I decided to use this set to show off the exposure quality and stability that the 6210 is capable of.

Figures 1 and 2 are the first two frames of the set of three stills. Figure 3 is the third frame and I have cropped it to 800 x 600 pixels to show the full size quality. Apart from resizing and cropping, all three files are as they left the camera which was set to the 5MP setting, producing a file size of 1.18MB and an image size of 2560 x 1920 pixels. The incorrect date was operator error but miraculously the time was correct to within a few minutes.

Bottom is the 20 second video.

The making of wildlife documentary Last of the Scottish Wildcats

Buy Last of the Scottish Wildcats DVD

New Book Store page

At long last I've made time to sort out my reference books page by integrating my Amazon aStore into the blog.

There are four pages of my own selection of books such as those illustrated right and the menu also includes Photography, Science and Nature; and Scientific and Technical.

I'll be occasionally adding to and changing my personal selection with books I think may be of interest.

Visit my Amazon Book Store

The Press Association: MSPs face snare ban proposals vote

I was born and raised on a farm. I've worked in farming, forestry and game keeping and I did my share of hunting, shooting, fishing and trapping before I saw the light; so I don't want any one telling me I don't understand what I'm talking about.

Snares, along with all outlawed forms of trapping are cruel, indiscriminate and barbaric, no matter how carefully they are used; and have no place in an enlightened society.

Those people who continue to advocate the use of snares should be ashamed of themselves; and I'm sure that if they spent a night with a snare wrapped around their neck they would have a different opinion in the morning.

There are humane methods for catching and controlling animals when it's absolutely necessary, and I do stress the word necessary.

It's unfortunate that the human animal still doesn't seem to be able to respect and tolerate other life forms, without feeling the need to destroy everything that is an inconvenience.

I sincerely hope the Scottish Government does the decent thing this time and finally bans the use of snares.

The Press Association: MSPs face snare ban proposals vote

The Highland Red Squirrel Group

The Scottish Highlands is now the only large UK mainland area where our native squirrel can still be found living in large healthy populations, free from the threat of competition by the introduced American Grey Squirrel.

There are plans for so called refuge forest areas to be created in the Highland region, consisting chiefly of small seeded conifers which, it is hoped, will provide a Red Squirrel friendly environment of little interest to Grey Squirrels as they continue their inexorable march northwards.

Part of this effort is the ongoing Scottish squirrel survey, the purpose of which is to accurately determine the true extent of the Highlands squirrel population. In the Highland region this is the remit of the Highland Red Squirrel Group which is a charity relying on volunteer surveyors. This method of attempting this task has an inherent problem in that it relies on the unpaid effort of people who have jobs and families to support with relatively little spare time.

I am in the fortunate position of being both active, retired and a bit of an anorak about the plight of our small red friends. Consequently I am able to devote a relatively large amount of time and effort to the task but I am only one person and there's a lot of forest which has never been properly surveyed.

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.

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.

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.