Category Archives: Wildlife

Samples of wildlife photography

Pretty Fox (Photo Special)

It’s always difficult to know what goes through the mind of a fox. They can visit regularly for weeks and months on end, and then disappear (or in the case of our foxes, they become shy and hide away). Pretty was the boldest of the cubs, a very regular garden visitor throughout the summer until she vanished. Until this week that is. She’s decided to return to the garden and has been in and out for several days now, though behaving more cautiously than when she was a cub. This being the weekend, I finally managed to get some photos of her.

fox standing

Feeling bold at the front of the garden

Fox hiding behind shrub

Gone shy! Finding a temporary hiding place.

Fox on low wall

Posing on stone edging

Fox and apples

Tasting the apples.

Fox scratching

Enjoying a scratch

Fox grooming

A spot of grooming

Sitting fox

Sitting Pretty

Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 7D. Lenses as follows: 1) EF 24-105 F4L IS USM; 2-5) EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS; 6-7) EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM.

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Four Portraits and a Video

The portraits are more of the smaller furry creatures that I’ve been photographing lately, but if you are not keen on rodents the video should make a welcome break in the recent trend. I’ll come to that in a moment. The mornings are becoming very gloomy at the moment, which probably suits the local rats rather better than many other pond inhabitants. There were several scurrying around on the pond fringe this morning, and they were quite bold.

Rat

Rat

Rat

Rat

I mentioned a few days ago that two of our local foxes had injured legs. I’m pleased to say that both foxes are on the mend, and are visiting nightly (though not when I’m around with a camera. The video is not one of the limping pair.It’s a short clip of Pretty, exploring just before midday today. It’s good to see her back in the garden, and with a bit of luck I may even get a photograph or two.

Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.

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Rat and Rabbit

It was heavily overcast this morning, and at lunchtime there was a touch of rain to add to the gloom. The kind of day when it might make more sense to put the camera away and read a book. I didn’t, and this morning came across a rabbit and a rat together at the edge of the pond. The photo isn’t up to much, but it’s an unusual pairing.

Rat and Rabbit

The rest are more shots of various rats, the mainstay of the local wildlife for now.

Rats

Rats

Rats

For those interested the the technicalities of getting shots at this time of year (and through the winter), the ISO settings of the four shots are 1000, 1600, 2500, 2500.

And for those interested in website issues I’d just like to offer a word of thanks to the support team at Photocrati. I’d encountered a problem on my Falmer Rats album. The thumbnails weren’t launching the photo. I attributed this to a combination of upgrades (the Photocrati theme, which is the engine for this part of site, and the Nextgen gallery which I use for the larger albums). I got in touch with them and received fantastic support. They investigated the site and found and fixed the problem. The upgrades had been fine, and it wasn’t a plug-in conflict either. I’d managed to tweak a setting into something logically incoherent, so it was down to user error. I notified the problem yesterday evening, and by the middle of today the site was running perfectly again. Can’t really say better than that, and so a big thank you to Drew and the Photocrati team. Great service.

Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.

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