November 2004

In the last few months, I've visited the National Bird of Prey Centre in Newent. I wanted to make one last visit before they pack up over 300 of the birds and move to the USA. I took a few pictures, but as usual the birds are not very photogenic due to the unsightly backgrounds and huge jesses. So I just came away with mainly headshots.

I concentrated on the red deer rut for about a month from late September onwards. So a last minute phone call was all I needed to make my first visit to the New Forest this year, and I ended up spending a total of 4 days down there - very successful, apart from the rain. While sheltering from the rain under a tree with fellow photographer Dean Dolton one morning and debating whether to wander back to our cars to have a drink, we heard some antlers clashing together behind us. We pushed our way through the bushes to find 2 stags fighting in front of us very close by; it then didn't matter what was happening to the weather as we fired off a odd frame or 2!!! The resulting pictures turned out to be some of my favourites so far. I took a fair few pictures over the 4 days and saw 3 separate fights involving stags.

On one of the days, we were sitting by our cars having a well-earned break when a man and wife approached us and told us about a small bird swimming around a pond just behind us. It turned out to be a Red-necked Phalarope, a very rare bird to see, so we took a couple of pictures like you would!

By the time the rut was over in the New Forest, the deer on Exmoor were just starting. Luckily I had managed to get myself a place in a purpose-built hide overlooking some rutting stands in the Dulverton area. I spent a few days there, which resulted in some great close up shots of hinds and stags and, as usual, it rained!

I managed to fit in an evening at a badger feeding station where I had 11 badgers in front of me - sometimes only a few feet away! The pictures didn`t come out as well as I would have liked, as the badgers wandered around on gravel with peanuts all around, but I`m going back in the new year with a plan to photograph them in the woods before they get to the gravel..so I'll let you know how I get on.

Recently I've been checking out my local areas, and several sites have a good number of short-eared owls now, so that will be a good opportunity for me, if the weather brightens up a bit. Have a look at one of my latest short-eared owl photos. Wintering birds have now started to descend on the Somerset Levels, and I was lucky enough to see a Peregrine falcon that had just caught and killed a Dunlin and proceeded to rip it to bits right in front of me.. good job my camera was set up ready!

Previous News:

August 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003

All images © Copyright Brian Phipps