Most Januarys I make the 40 mile trip from home to the Forest of Dean to see one of my favourite birds, the charismatic Hawfinch. So, with at least sunny intervals forecast after the recent storms, this was my birding destination yesterday. The spot I go to is in Parkend under a group of yew trees. Here the proven technique of using your car as a hide normally works well. It can be quite popular with birders so I normally plan to arrive early to get a good spot. And so it was that I arrived 30 minutes before dawn yesterday and was able to get myself set up in a plumb spot with no one else present.
The story of Hawfinches in the UK is, to my mind at least, a fascinating one. It is what is known as an eruptive species meaning that it occasionally erupts from its traditional breeding grounds to invade on mass countries much further away. This is thought to be driven by a combination of breeding success and local crop failure resulting in not enough food to go around.
Records indicate that the Hawfinch was a very rare winter visitor to the UK up to the 18th century. It would then seem that an eruptive event in the 1830’s resulted in a small breeding colony being established in Epping forest. This seed colony was clearly very successful as the Hawfinch subsequently spread across the UK’s forests such that by 1960 they had reached as far north as central Scotland. Sadly, along with so many other birds, there numbers have since steadily declined. In the autumn of 2017 another eruption event occurred with many hundreds of birds being found across the UK in unusual locations. There was hope that some would stay to bolster our native birds but, as far as I’m aware, there is no evidence that this happened, so the vast majority presumably returned to continental Europe in the Spring of 2018.
The Hawfinches at Parkend feed on yew seeds both on the ground and in the trees with the on ground seeds often being supplemented with sunflower seeds by birders. The combination of the weak January sun and the dense cover generated by the yews generates quite challenging lighting conditions for photography. These days I rarely use my monster 800mm lens preferring the much more ergonomic 500 mm with x2 converter added when necessary. The 800 mm is an old design and the more modern 500mm with x2 converter normally produces comparable results. The only real advantage of the 800 mm prime is its fully open aperture of f5.6 compared to the f8 of the 500mm and x2 converter combination. Thus the 800mm prime is collecting 4 times the light when fully open. This can be very useful in low lighting conditions meaning that either the ISO or shutter speed can be upped by the same factor compared to the 500mm extender combination. I hence travelled with both combinations but rapidly gave up on the 800mm and used the 500mm and converter instead. The monster 800mm is so big and cumbersome when pointed out of the car window. It really only works in a hide on a tripod.
Patience is required with this particular activity as the Hawfinches are very flighty and easily spooked by any disturbance. They tend to associate with a larger flock of Chaffinches and, in general, they will only land after the Chaffinches have been down for a while indicating all is safe. Even then a noisy lorry on the nearby road or people walking by will immediately flush them high up into the yews. I hence spent a full eight hours in my car hide trying to get a semi decent photo. In common with most but not all birds, the male is much brighter and more colourful than the female and a decent photo of a male was hence what I really hoped for. Right at the end of the 8 hour shift a brightly coloured male finally landed comparatively close by and stayed on the ground feeding for long enough for me to run off a series of shots.
One big advantage of modern digital cameras in general, and the R5 in particular, is that they are much more sensitive to light that the old film based SLR cameras. When I first got the photography hobby bug in my early twenties I was heavily into landscape photography. The state of the art in terms of film that I used was Kodachrome produced by Kodak. This was available as either ISO 32 or ISO 64 slide film. Photographing the Hawfinches would simply been impossible with this film. To put it in to true perspective the image at the top of this blog was shot at ISO 12,800 and then run through state of the art noise reduction software ( if you want to do this you MUST shoot in RAW). My R5 operating at ISO 12,800 is a truly staggering 400 times more sensitive to light that Kodachrome 32!
For those so inclined, this is because a modern digital camera uses either a charge-coupled device (CCD) or active-pixel sensor (CMOS) manufactured from ultra-pure Silicon. In principle these can detect single photons of light whereas the old style films were reliant on the light producing a much less sensitive chemical reaction in the silver nitride of the film.
I normally try to use the tried and tested rules of composition in photography, for example the thirds rule, but very often nature intervenes. This is the case in the photo at the top of the page which is cropped much harder than I would normally like to remove distracting objects from the composition.
While for a lot of people almost anything would be preferable to sitting in a car staring at a spot under some trees for 8 hours while waiting for the Hawfinches, I find it strangely relaxing and therapeutic! Perhaps it’s because its in complete contrast to my normal impulsive and impatient nature.
On the way home I popped into the close by Cannop ponds to look for Mandarin ducks. Now if bling is your thing this is definitely the duck for you! They are so exotic looking that it’s sometimes hard to imagine that they are real rather than something dreamed up by a deranged cartoonist. As the name suggests, this duck originates from Asia but they are widely kept in collections from which specimens frequently escape, and in the 20th century, a large, self-sustaining feral population was established in the UK.
Now here’s a semi-interesting factoid. For Koreans, mandarin ducks represent peace, fidelity, and plentiful offspring. Similar to the Chinese, they believe that these ducks mate for life. For these reasons, pairs of wooden-carved Mandarin ducks called wedding ducks are often given as wedding gifts and play a significant role in Korean marriage ceremonies.
For whatever reason I find that days like this wash the worries of everyday modern life from my brain such that my mood upon departure is almost always so very much better for a day relaxing in and being surrounded by nature and yesterday was certainly no exception.
Very good explanation of the ins and outs of advanced digital photography. Thank you!
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