Travel Reports

Last Thursday while waiting to photograph Kingfishers at a large lake in West Sussex I was amazed to watch a Carrion Crow sucessfully catch a fish by diving into the water.  The crow flew very low over the lake before diving head first into the water and then emerge with a Roach in its beak!  The bird then flew to an overhanging branch at the edge of the lake where it put the fish out of its misery before devouring its prey.  I can only think that the clever crow had studied and ...

A second visit for me to this wonderful wildlife park where I was hoping to photograph Ospreys as they went about their daily search for fish in the clear waters of the Cairngorms.  During my visit, each day I was fortunate enough to photograph these magnificent raptors as they swooped down into the water to grab Brown trout.  A picture of a successful dive can be seen above and more in the  ...

I left for India on the 6 May. Arriving in Delhi, I took an internal flight to Nagpur, my final destination being Pench.  Four days spent here provided no tiger sightings. Sadly a few weeks before I arrived at the reserve a well known tigress and two of her cubs were found poisoned at a water hole. I understand that those concerned were attempting to poach deer but a beautiful tigress and her cubs were also killed.  Leaving Pench we drove to Tadoba for a stay of nine days. Each day a ...

I returned home recently from a trip to the Plains of Hortobágy in Hungary mainly photographing White tailed eagles.  I also had the opportunity to take some images of passerines at a 'drinking hide'.  Unfortunately the weather was inclement - each day the sky was full of cloud thus making photography difficult - high ISO levels in order to obtain a reasonable shutter speed!  The pho ...

I have just returned from a visit to The Pantanal.  My principle interest was to photograph the Jaguar, this being only one of two cat species that spend much of their time in the water. Each day I was fortunate to find these magnificent animals both at rest and on occasions searching the river banks for their principle prey species, the Caiman.  I saw a female Jaguar swim across a wide river while unsuccessfully trying to persuade her female cub to follow.  Reaching the opposit ...

I arrived for my annual visit to Ranthambhore on the 10 May. This time I was concentrating my efforts on photographing tigress T19, also known as Krishna, together with her three 15 month old cubs.  I was not disappointed; on my first drive around the famous lakes area I found the tigress and cubs having fun in a muddy pool of water.  I was able to see them most days during the 2 weeks spent at the reserve which was wonderful.  Unfortunately, the sightings were tempered on the 1 ...

I arrived at my lodge in Tadoba during the evening of the 16 March at the outset of a severe thunderstorm that fortunately cleared in the early morning allowing no disruption of my first drive in the park.  This was to be my first visit to this tiger reserve comprising mainly of teak and bamboo. It is home to about sixty tigers.  During my stay I was able to photograph a young male leopard walking through the tall grass.  Surprisingly a few minutes later three Chital deer   ...

For a week this month I visited Flatanger in Norway, a three hour car journey from Trondheim. In an attempt to photograph Sea eagles with my guide, we sailed the fjords and successfully spent time with several of the eagles each having a territory of their own.  Visiting a mountain hide, I was surprised to witness Sea eagles feeding on carrion - another photographic opportunity!  The photograph is of a Seaa Eagle as it attempts to make a catch. A small number of photographs from my t ...

Last week I travelled to Pembrokeshire, Wales, for two days of photography on Skomer with its amazing Puffin colony.  I was informed that there are about 18,000 pairs of these characterful birds on the island plus around 300,000 Manx Shearwaters.  The Shearwaters arrive when it is dark in an effort to avoid predation by the voracious gulls who also inhabit the island. The Puffins are very active at this time of the year attempting to bring in sand-eels from the sea to feed their chic ...

This week I enjoyed a five day trip to eastern Hungary to photograph some of the bird species found in the region. From a hide, one of the most interesting birds that I recorded was the Red-footed Falcon.  It was a pleasure to view the birds as they visited the nesting site with mice and grasshoppers to feed their young.  The slate grey male falcon returned with prey to pass to the female; she in turn appeared to be 'stripping' off either the coat of a mouse or wings from a g ...