2013 Revisited

I do not usually produce a retrospective end of year blog post but thought I would do one for a change. So I have picked a photograph or two from each month, each of which stirs particularly strong memories for me in terms of wildlife encounters.

January - saw me sat of a freezing North Wales beach photographing a flock of around a dozen Snow Bunting.

February - I headed up to the Highlands to try and photograph a Capercaillie. Such a magnificent bird which has left life long memories.

March - A prolonged cold spring and instead of photographing hares amongst the daffodils, they were boxing in deep snow.

April - Calling in to the Forest of Dean to break up a long long drive home from a work meeting found me with a long awaited Garganey in front of the camera for the first time.

May - I tried to restict myself to photograph from each month but failed in May which is always one of the busiest months for a wildlife photographer. A first light start saw a reeling Grasshopper Warbler in front of me. I have many photographs of these birds now but find myself drawn back to them each spring.

A chance encounter with a beautiful vixen.

June - I headed off on my annual overseas trip in June to Romania and the Danube Delta. A beautiful place filled with many wonderful birds. Here is one of the images from the trip of a Squacco heron feeding on a frog.

July - On my return from Romania I had a concerted effort with trying to photograph the extremely wary Green Woodpecker with a moderate degree of success. In this photograph the young bird on the left is watching the adult male excavate yet another ants' nest.

August- I returned to Scotland once again but this time to photograph the Ospreys at Rothiemurchus. An amazing experience just to watch, let alone photograph.

September - Throughout the summer I had been undertaking various sessions with water voles on a Cheshire canal. This was part of a long term project and some very enjoyable and relaxing morning were had by the waterside.

October - A fairly quiet month although I did head out to North Wales to try and photograph a Grey Phalarope. After several hours waiting the bird came close only to be scared away by the sudden appearance of a large dog, resulting in only a couple of photographs being taken.

November - An unexpected encounter with some Redwing feeding on rowan trees against a back cloth of autumn hues

December - Another chance encounter, this time with a beautiful male bullfinch whilst trying to photograph Fieldfare.

Of course December is not over yet and tomorrow will see me heading out to try and capture my first images of Mountain Hare. Hopefully this will produce some more special memories to add to what has been another interesting year in my journey in wildlife photography.

This will be my  last blog post for this year so I will take the moment to wish you all a Happy, Healthy and wildlife filled 2014.

Water Vole Education

With the skies a leaden blanket of grey outside and the rain beating against the window, its nice to turn the clock back a couple of months to think about the long warm days of summer. After putting in a bit of effort in photographing water voles in the spring, I decided to return to them once more in the mid to late summer period. My water voles photography is a long-term project (possibly lifelong!) but I felt that I really had not spent enough time with them to learn about their behaviour and habitats.

Why bother? Well for two main reasons firstly out of personal interest and secondly once you can start to get an insight into how an animal behaves then the photography often becomes easier. The other purpose for this concerted effort was also to look at experimenting with techniques to get around the significant constraints on photography at this particular canal site. Overall these sessions proved to be very useful and I have now formulated a clear approach for photographing the water voles at this site next year. Importantly I have also learnt a great deal about the voles which will hopefully be readily transferable to other sites.

Timing is all in wildlife photography, afterall it is impossible to photograph what isn't there. Many animals have regular daily routines and it is only be frequent observation that you can start establishing patterns. Once your have worked out where and when they are likely appear, which can take some time, then you can actually start pursuing an approach of short targeted but productive photography sessions. This has a real benefit if you only have limited camera time to fit into an otherwise busy life. People often say to me  that I must have a lot of patience to photograph wildlife but with this targeted approach minimises the waiting around and staring at fresh air.

Water voles have cycles of routine - eat, clean, sleep, eat, clean, have a dispute with the neighbour, sleep and so on. Often several will become active feeding at the same time and then it will go quiet again as they go back to sleep. If you arrived in a sleep period you could easily be forgiven that there are no voles there at all except for the typical vole signs they leave in their wake. After a few first light visits it quickly became obvious that one particular activity period occurred between around 8:30 - 10:00 am. A very early start would just see me sat for several hours with no activity and  quickly ruled out the need to set the alarm clock to a very unsociable hour. I ended up spending a good deal of time photographing one particular vole which I could almost predict. It would appear in a particular spot on the far side of the canal and feed for a while, drop into the water with that characteristic 'plop', swim to a patch of common reed to feed there for a while, drop back in the canal swim back to original spot to feed some more before disappearing (presumably for a sleep).

Sitting by the side of a canal in camouflage clothing (although this is actually probably unnecessary as water vole eyesight is not great) with a long lens pointing towards apparently nothing on the far bank inevitably draws attention and enquiry from every passing boat, jogger, cyclist and dogwalker. Typically the response is 'oh water voles' and inevitably their eyes avert to where the camera is pointing in the hope of a glimpse of this rapidly declining mammal. I remember one particular jogger who stopped and asked. I indicated that there was one currently in the patch of reeds and if she looked at a particular stem she would see it disappearing which is was rapidly in short 15cm movements as the vole pulled it downwards. The jogger stood transfixed by the rapidly disappearing vegetation.

I very rarely record video, and this is a blog first, but thought you may be interested in this short clip of a Water vole feeding, not very sensibly on stinging nettles as you will see towards the end.

Water Vole feeding from Richard Steel on Vimeo.

The water vole photography season is now over but I am already looking forward to putting what I have learnt and trialing of different techniques in to action. So here wishing the colony a safe and mink-free winter.

Spring Water Vole Patrol

It is with some relief that I have finally got my Romania blog posts finished off. It took much longer than anticipated as there were many photographs to go through. So now I can get back to what I have been doing in the UK this year and have lots of interesting images to bring you that include water voles, hares, green woodpeckers, ospreys and kingfisher. The water voles and green woodpeckers I have put quite a bit of effort into this year and enjoyed every moment of it. So I will start the ball rolling with some spring Water voles.

Regular readers will know that I started photographing water voles last year, thanks to being show some locations by Kate the very knowledgeable vole expert. Many thank once again for showing me the world of water voles to which I have become a lifelong fan :). Unfortunately I did not have time to put much effort into this last year, and so thought I would try a bit harder in this one at the same canal site. It is not the easiest site for photography due to various constraints but I always like a challenge.  My plan on this long-term project was to spend my time this year thinking about techniques and approaches to improve the images and importantly learning more about the voles. I am hoping to put all I have learnt this year, which has been a great deal,  into a final concerted effort next year to hopefully realise the virtual photographs in my head.

My first visit was back in April, which was mainly a reconnaissance visit to check the voles were still present. My main concern was that an American mink may have found the colony and wiped it out. As I pulled into the parking area all my fears subsided as there sat on the far bank on the canal, in the early sun, was a water vole nibbling away on some grass. A promising start but those photographs were the only one from that visit, although I did spot a couple more voles and there were several typical signs of activity.

 As you can see in the photograph below. The water vole is on top of some fabric which has been used to repair the bank in this section of the canal and one of the reasons why the vole thrive here as they are able to gnaw through the fabric to make their burrows. Obviously this is something they are not able to do on the more usual concrete canal banks! Other key reasons why they are present is an undisturbed far bank of the canal, the lack of mink and also importantly the maintenance of a buffer strip of vegetation between the canal and adjoining agricultural fields. It shows that a few simple vole-friendly measures can greatly assist in providing suitable habitat for this rapidly declining mammal. Depressingly national survey results released last week showed there had been another estimated 20% drop in the water vole population, although I think part of this result may be due to marked reduction in surveying effort.

Given that the spring had been so delayed by the cold conditions I did not visit the site again until early May, when I figured there would be more activity, and undertook a further two morning sessions during this month before having to head off to Romania. These sessions proved productive and I managed to capture a good number of water vole images but was also starting to get a better handle on their behaviour and routines. I must admit I have become addicted to water vole photography which I find very relaxing, although does require some patience, and it is always a real pleasure to watch the antics of these very endearing animals.

A selection of images from these Spring sessions are shown below.

Just about to drop into the canal with that characteristic 'plop' which I am constantly listening out for.

There are very few places for the water voles to sit at water level in the canal. This one is a perched on an old rusty bolt.

Appearing through a hole in the fabric.

Swimming along like a mini beaver

and taking some dry grass back to burrow

I have witnessed the water voles eating some unusual vegetation, in this case some ivy which I always thought was fairly inedible.

It is now time to introduce you to one particular vole which I have been watching in particular and learning its routine and with which I spent a good deal of time during the late summer observing and photographing. So expect to see some more photographs of it in a future water vole blog post.

Vole Patrol


I have been thinking about photographing water voles for a while. The main problem was where to start with numbers having suffered such a catastrophic decline. The key reasons for the decline, of this once common rodent, may be attributed to both habitat loss and fragmentation and the appearance of an 'alien' invader. The habitat requirements appear to be fairly straight forward being a slow flowing watercourse with a diverse abundance of aquatic and bank-side vegetation, banks that can be burrowed in to and minimal disturbance. However, the routine maintenance clearing of drainage channels to assist in the conveyance of flows and loss of river floodplains have all taken their toll on the vole. The other main factor has been the arrival and establishment of the American mink in the UK countryside through releases from fur farms. Some of these releases have been deliberately undertaken by anti-fur protesters concerned about animal rights. They obviously did not think about the rights of the native UK wildlife when they opened the cages to this highly efficient predators.

Fortunately there is a much greater awareness of water voles now which have been rightly afforded full protection status for both the animals and their habitat. A great deal of effort has gone into the encouraging the animals to return naturally through habitat management and assisted through re-introduction programmes together with the implementation of control measures on mink numbers.

Given the lack of local voles I decided to seek some help from a water vole expert, who kindly took me out to show me a couple of sites with a thriving population. She also helped me and hopefully my photography by providing a great deal of useful background information on their behaviour and how to look for signs of  their activity. Signs that previously I would not have seen such as small grazed patches of vegetation or plants stems cut with a characteristic 45 degree bite. So I would like to very much thank Kate for her invaluable help.

The site where I decided to concentrate my photography efforts is a short section of canal  where the usual concrete vole unfriendly banks have been replaced with a staked material. This allows the voles to chew hole in the material and access a buffer zone of abundant vegetation that separates the canal from the surrounding farmland.

From a photography perspective the site is slightly awkward as there are very few water level places for the voles to sit and only limited opening on the bank top where they have grazed down the vegetation on the opposite bank to which there is no access.

The photography of water voles is a waiting game and relying on them to appear at certain points where a clear view is possible. it appears to be characterised by brief flurries of activity between long periods of quiet. The start of the activity is often signalled by a rustling in the vegetation or a characteristic plop sound as one launches itself from the bank into the canal.

One bit of interesting behaviour I have already observed is how the voles fell small willows, like a mini beaver, to fall from the bank into the water so they can strip the stems free of leaves.

Of the various rodent species Water voles and Dormice are generally the species that have gain most popularity due to their threatened status but also they are visually very appealing animals. I also think that the cause of the water vole has no doubt been helped by fond memories of 'ratty' from the childhood stories of Wind in the Willows. They certainly have a charm went they are sat looking around and their popularity is also helped in that they often seem to be wearing a 'smile'. I have found that I much prefer to photograph the adults than the young which seem to have much more 'character'.

This is only the starting phase of this mini mission to photograph these delightful animals and I look forward to many more happy hours quietly sitting on the canal side watching the world go by and the place being lit up with the occasional appearance of a water vole.