Retrospective

I'm craving the arrival of spring and longer evenings.  Today ended up as another corker of a day, and tonight we all congretated outside to watch the International Space Station.  I couldn't see it for love nor money, but Kee did.  Shame we missed Discovery the other night.

So having posted twice in two days I'm getting bolder and looking back at previous efforts.  Tempting as it is to search the summer photos and reminisce about long warm evenings, I've started by going over this last winter.

Wow.

Having moved in during the heatwave that was June 2010, winter was quite something.  Bless her, the house held up superbly and kept us (mostly) warm, while outside the waterbutt froze and swelled to such an extent that it almost keeled over.  It seems funny now looking at my bags of rock salt in the open fronted shed, yet it wasn't all that long ago.

When the sun shone and the snow glistened, this place came into its own.  The trees around the Fen particularly, on the days when the frost covered the branches in a delicate, perfect sprinkling of white.  I love this photo just because it does what it says on the tin (apologies Ronseal).  Our house will never win an architectural prize nor a beauty parade, but she wears her heart on her sleeve and is as honest a building as you'll find.

The boys made a snowman in the meadow with Grandad one Friday, and it proved a popular fixture for a few weeks.  I walked through the yard one morning and saw our little owl sat on its head.  You never have your camera with you when you need it.

Iinstead we used it as the focal point for a feeding station for the local wildlife.  The summer's Bramleys were well wrapped and stored in the piggery, but we spared a good wheelbarrow-full for the fieldfares, redwings and mistle thrushes.

Others seemed to appreciate the apples as well.  This young buck Roe deer became a regular visitor, and kept coming back loing after the snow had melted (even though the snowman survived the thaw).

He came back at the weekend, and I even saw him this morning, looking scruffy as his winter coat moults, but his velvety antlers are growing and he seems to have more of a strut about him. Unlike Red deer, Roes rut in the summer but breed in late winter (I think), so he's got about four months to get himself in shape for the summer.  I know how you feel old chap.

What I thought were weeds at the front of the house also turned out to be a valuable food source.  Sat in the dining room one day I heard twittering from under the window, and in my best SAS-style crawl managed to get to the window without showing my head until the last moment.  This goldfinch certainly seemed surprised to see me.

But the enduring memory of the winter was the regular visitor to our meadow, Athene noctua, known to most people as a little owl.  A right character, we first noticed him sat on molehills pre-dawn when we came down for breakfast and peered through the scope into the gloom.  Regular as clockwork he would disappear as soon as the night started to fade.  At the end of the short winter days you would hear him screeching from next door's oak tree, or even from the wires in the field at the back.  He seemed to take up residence in the dilapidated shed in next door's field, and would hop across the hedge and sit in the bottom of our apple tree.

Here is a bird who exudes attitude, who can out-stare you in a game of poker.  Grumpy, boisterous, flighty, motionless.  Everything wrapped up in one little package of feathery charisma.

We haven't seen him for weeks, not even heard him.  Maybe he's off looking for the ladies.  Let's hope he's back in the summer with a new family of littl'uns, sat on the fence post, hopping down for some worms then flitting back.

Farewell winter.

Welcome spring.

Learning to fly

One of the motivations for going for a walk is to try and be there at the moment when nature surprises you and you're least expecting it.  I've never yet been for a walk at the Fen and not been surprised by something, however small or seemingly inconsequential.

One of the challenges is trying to photograph that moment when you give yourself only about three quarters of an hour.  As the season unfurls I can push the alarm back - yes I know I'm a bit odd - but I can't wait till I can get up at 5am and take my time.

One of the surprising parts is downloading photos.  I never expect to have captured the photo I saw in my mind's eye, and the vast majority of the time reality matches expectation.  But as the title of this post suggests, my version of learning to fly is about what to do with those hundreds - thousands? - of images, both jpeg and RAW, that I download and leave.  Quite apart from the memory they consume, I need to look at them afresh to learn how I can do it better next time.

In the field it's all about seeing and shooting - images, not rounds - I'll save those for the grey squirrels (sorry chaps).  I know what I want to photograph, and I think I know how, but with the best will in the world I simply don't have time to plan much.

So tonight I've sat down and looked again at an image I took yesterday.  The barn owl had turned in front of the wood and came back towards me.  Without the benefit of spot metering I was using centre-weighted, and with a white object on a dark background at ISO 800 it didn't strike me as an image worth playing with.  Still, I'd deleted the other ten or so on the card and saved this RAW and the one I posted yesterday - the one that could have been. 

I've got Adobe Photoshop Elements, and I bought the idiot's guide to using it, but somehow it just doesn't float my boat.  I'm just not that into post-processing.  Yet.  Instead I'm playing with Picasa 3 as it lets you download RAW and preview them.

So I pulled up the flying barn owl, tweaked a few sliders, and saved the jpeg.  And you know what?  It sort of works.  Sort of. (click to enlarge)

I'm still not sure about the blurred wings, and it's a noisy image having been taken at a high ISO, but there's just enough detail in the white to make out the fawn colour surrounding the heart-shaped face.

I saw him again this morning, this time in the field by the sluice.  I tried getting into position in the undergrowth at the edge to get a better shot, but 15 stone and size twelves on frosty reeds tend to create rather a lot of noise.  I let him go this morning.

The geese are becoming more active each day.  Three of them honked their way down to the water just before sunrise.  The photo's wrong in so many ways, yet the feeling of cold, morning light seems to come across.  The pink hue in the sky, the still reeds with jack frost, and the sun just about to break cover.

It makes me feel cold just looking at it.  Lovely.

And then, even though I had to get home, the sun started to break through the trees.  A 420mm telephoto doesn't really lend itself to landscapes, so I tried to think of a different way of capturing it.  All I wanted was one of the reed buntings to hop up to the top of a stem rather than hide away lower down, and I'd have given Niall Benvie a run for his money.  Or not as the case may be.

Instead I settled for a sunrise, one of those spritual, life-affirming moments where you feel that the day is yours to shape as you wish.

Learning to fly.

At first you fall to the ground.

With trial and error you take off, however ungracefully.

Eventually you get the hang of it.

One day.

Maybe.

Changing the Guard

Littlebitofbreadnocheese.

Teacher-teacher-teacher.

Even a skylark on the edge of Harleston last Tuesday.

The signs are there: spring is creeping in and winter is sliding out.

Nature is amazing in the way that it permeates every aspect of your life.  A site meeting today turned to stone curlews, followed by a farm tour and the strange savannah-esque spectacle of starlings riding the back of great mud-wading sows.

This morning was a cracker.  Pearlescent clear sky and the sun trying to force its way above the horizon.  Freezing cold and a frost underfoot, still only March remember.  The farmer was out ploughing at 6am, following yesterday's muck-spreading.  Everyone's getting ready.  Yet it's not an event that happens on a particular day or at a set time.  It just happens, it's like many things that you only notice when you look back.  And looking back now I can see how time has played out and the changes have quietly happened without any fanfare.

The fieldfares roost at the base of the reeds by the viewing platform.  Each morning I put them up, unintentionally, and they burst to the sky making their peculiar call, clearly annoyed.

The peeow of reed buntings, I always find myself double-checking it's not the ping of bearded tits.

Jenny wren and her feisty tik tik tik, always on the front foot.  Canada geese lifting off in pairs, everywhere pairs.  Roe deer.  Great tits.  Swans.  The collared doves on the bricks at home, tendng to each other like doting lovers.

Big sky, backlit reedbeds, frosted molehills underfoot.  Is he there?  Another morning drawing a blank.

There.  Far end of middle fen.  White, slightly bouncing flight.  Quartering.  Turn.  Drop.

Right to the spider pools or straight on.  Decisions, decisions.  Spider pools.

He's coming back my way.  Find a bush and try and use it as cover while still affording as wide a view as possible.  Tracking with autofocus now but still ISO800 and a slowish shutter speed.  Autofocus struggling to keep up.  Pan left and half press.  Hold.  Hold.  Here he comes, he hasn't seen me, bloody hell he's faster than I thought.  Straight towards me, then he looks up and veres away to his left.  Did I get it? (Nope.)

I follow him towards the wood and take position against the trees at the side of the path.  He's hunting in front of me.  A roe deer puts up and flashes his white rump as he bounds away.  The owl passes right over him.  Perfect harmony but playing in different keys.  Two worlds, same view.  Wow.

More shots then it's back as the sun is coming up.  Absolutely beautiful day.

Spring.  Welcome.