Wildlife from my Doorstep (ish)

Let’s whizz back in time a few weeks, to the beginning of November, when we were in the midst of a 2 week stint of grey. The maize field out the back of our house has just been cut, and I noticed, that in the tree next to the field, there were an awful lot of corn husks. This intrigued me greatly, and so, setting up my camera in the living room window, I set out to find out what was making all the mess.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait too long to find the culprit, a pair of grey squirrels. They had been popping into the field and carrying off bits of corn that the machinery had left behind and climbing back up into the safety of the tree to consume it. This fascinated me for days, and it was such a delight to watch this behaviour. With my new to me trusty 200-600 G lens, I was able to capture some images and video that I am really happy with.

I did have to do a bit of photoshopping, to remove a couple of awkwardly located twigs in my favourite image, just to clean it up a bit, but I am really happy with the results that I got.

It wasn’t just the squirrels making the most of the leftover corn, it had also attracted quite the flock of pheasants. I did get some images and video from the window, but decided that, even if it was grey and miserable, I didn’t need to be! So headed out into the field (I have permission from the farmer to be there), with my gear and the camo hide, to set up and try and get some eye level images of the pheasants.

I didn’t have to wait long before I got my first images. As I was setting up, a male pheasant flew into the field and just hung around the hide, not fussed at all by it or me.

Now, there is one pheasant in this field that I particularly want to photograph, as he has some quite stunning plumage. I did a lot of looking online to see what the colour variations were called (this was harder than I thought it would be), but I did manage to find one site that referenced this colouring as ‘grey-rumped’.

He and another male did work their way up to me, and I got some lovely video footage of him, however, was so focused on that, I missed what would be the best opportunity to get some images of him doh!

I managed to capture some images that I am really happy with, of some of the other male pheasants that were out in the field. I am particularly happy with one where the male is all puffed up shaking his feathers out.

A little later on, the grey-rumped male made another appearance, and this time I did manage to capture an image of him. He was very far away, so I put the camera into APS-C mode for some extra reach/in camera cropping. He didn’t hang around for long though, so I only got the one image, well one image that I am happy with!

Things quietened down a bit then, with the pheasants working their way back up the field towards where I was sitting. This was when I created some of my favourite images from this outing. I just love how the male stands out with his stunning copper plumage, against the somewhat drab background of the stubble field.

At this point, some female pheasants had joined the group, and were now up behind me in the dog leg of the field. It was great to be able to watch them interact with each other, and a male started to court one of the females.

As they worked their way down the field again, I was able to capture it all on camera, though as I was focused on filming it, the only image I got was quite far off, but I do like how the male has his red wattles are still on show.

It was now, that I spotted the squirrel from the tree, was actually sat in the middle of the field having a munch on some corn. It was quite far off and small amongst the stubble that it was a bit tricky to photograph. I am happy with the images I got, though the stem of the maize is quite long against the squirrel and ended up being in a rather annoying spot right in front of the squirrel.

I was starting to get very cold now, but the two female pheasants had started to come away from the group and slowly start coming towards me, so I stayed out to capture some images of them, and I am glad I did as they came out really well and really rounded of the set of images that I got from the day.

Over the 2 hours that I was out there, I had an excellent time in the field. It was a much-needed break from my routine and felt so good to be back out with the camera after about a month’s break (as the timeline goes this was my first outing since the red deer which was a month before, the snow from the last blog post was after this, but it felt logical to release the snow post first so I could hop on the snow wagon while it was trendy...). I am really happy with my image and videos that I created and will try and make sure I don’t leave it so long between getting out with the camera again.