Category Archives: rats

Morning Light and a stoat-ally special surprise

The weather is holding good. It’s mild, and today the early mists were being beaten back by some beautiful sunshine. Good light makes all the difference to taking photos, especially of common subjects such as these ducks. Each makes a slightly different use of the light, though my favourite is the silhouette.

Duck on rock

white duck landing

duck silhouette

As the sun rises the light loses its quality, but it was still provided some nice illumination of a young rat scrabbling over the rocks.

rat

rat

The really special moment came later in the day, with the sun high. I was back at the pond, but for a change looked out into the surrounding fields. At the edge of the woodland fringe a sharp movement caught my eye. As a startled rabbit ran out to safety in the field I spotted a stoat darting through the thick brush. These aren’t the best shots of a stoat, but I see stoats so rarely that I’m not going to leave them out.

Stoat

Stoat

Stoat

Stoat

Stoat

The entire sighting was over in about 8 seconds. Naturally I stayed glued to the spot in case it reappeared, but it wasn’t to be. Wonderful to see though.

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

Also posted in Birds, Stoat, water birds, Wildlife Tagged , , , , |

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.

Also posted in Foxes, Wildlife Tagged , , |

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.

Also posted in Wildlife Tagged , |