Rupert Soskin Nature Photography Blog News Feed

When the wind plays

Friday February 10th 2012
Well, winter had been mild. The sun shone, flowers were in bloom everywhere and insects were busy. Then came the snow. A little later than usual and after such a warm start I just hope that there aren't too many insect casualties when I need them most. We've had minus 15 degrees and even the foxes and badgers have been staying home.

The winds were ferocious for a couple of days so I spent some time in the freezing cold trying to capture the spiralling snow devils. Sadly didn't get a good vortex but you get an idea of what was happening across the field.

Even more nocturnals

Tuesday January 24th 2012
A real treat this week. I have an old haybale in the woods which terrifyingly rolled down the hill a few years ago. Fortunately a tree took the impact and held firm so I just left it there for animals to use for nesting material. Some new holes appeared in it recently so I set the camera up to see who had taken up residence. It's possible this stoat has made a home but probably more likely that it has eaten whatever rodent was inside. Lovely to see a stoat on the land anyway, so I'll try to watch his antics more closely now I know he's there.

Closer towards the house I'd also spotted some tiny new holes in the bank. Impossible to tell from infra red imagery which species of mouse it is but working on the basis that it's too big to be a harvest mouse and too small for a yellow-necked mouse, it must be either a field mouse or a wood mouse.

When I've got some proper shots I'll put some up - fingers crossed!

Nocturnal goings-on

Monday January 9th 2012
Where does the time go?! It's been a crazy few months with so much going on, my new year's resolution must be to update the blog regardless of workload. I don't really have an excuse, it's not as if days go by with nothing happening!

Pretty much every day I walk around the land looking for tracks and traces, picking out places to monitor more closely. I finally decided that I would make my life a lot easier if I bought a stealthcam to get a better idea of what was happening. After a lot of agonising I bought an Ltl Acorn 5210a from the fine people at trail-camera.co.uk. It's a great piece of kit and makes it much simpler to decide where and when to plan night shoots.

The family of boars were a real surprise and turn up about once a week. There were a lot of gunshots from the hunters last weekend though, so it will be interesting to see how many turn up next time. The foxes and badgers come every night. Foxes usually between 10.00 and midnight, badgers do the next shift, usually turning up around 2.00 am. Occasionally they overlap which makes for some interesting and cautious behaviour between them. It's not too easy to tell from the screengrab of the badgers, but the one in the foreground was lying on his back having a damned good scratch.

I'm now planning how to set-up and light the spot for some good saleable shots. There are some long cold nights ahead I think!

More nocturnal goings on

Monday January 16th 2012
I have to say, the trailcam is providing a lot of fun. The animals were slightly wary of the LEDs at first but have got used to it being there. Behaviour patterns have become fairly unpredictable as the badgers now turn up just after dark and seem to stay all night. In fact one of them was still there just after 7.00 in the morning.

A couple of foxes turn up regularly, one of which gets a bit aggressive with the badgers. It's clearly nothing dangerous because two nights ago when it looked like it was starting a fight with one badger, the other just ignored it all and carried on eating about a metre away.

One of the most exciting things to see was the entire boar family lining up to be filmed. It's a screen-grab from a movie file, hence the lower quality, but impressive nonetheless. Still more shooting in the hills last weekend so again, I have no idea how many survivors to expect.

Unpredictable insects

Monday September 19th 2011
I have all sorts going on at the moment but thought these beautiful creatures were worth sharing. There are various species of green lacewing but usually their eggs are rounded. I found these tiny pointed eggs ( the pods are nearly two millimetres long) on a dry grass stem and watched them for a full two weeks before they hatched. One of the downsides of finding eggs in the field is that obviously you don't know when they were laid. Hatching could occur within days or weeks so there is no option but to be patient. Insect eggs do tend to become more transparent as the time approaches so it's not as if you have to have your nose glued to them all the time. But once the change begins to occur, you do have to be vigilant.

This is a single shot. The larva second from the right began hatching first and I expected to get at best a couple of hatches in the same shot. It was an amazing thing to watch, as all of them began hatching within an hour of each other. They remained, clinging to their empty eggs for nearly twenty four hours before disappearing into the foliage in search of food.

More close encounters

Monday June 20th 2011
Well, the boar keeps coming back and last night he let me get really close. It must be something in the nonsense I keep telling him. It's not a great picture but difficult working in the dark using a timer and trying to guess framing (note to self: Bring lamp).

On a serious note, it's a real dilemma with wild boars, as to how close you want to get. Not because of any personal danger, that's only real if you're a threat. Like a lot of animals they smell fear so you're fine if you are calm and obviously not frightened of them. The issue is whether it puts them in greater danger from the hunters in the area. If they get too accustomed to people will they be less fearful of a real danger?

The reality is that the hunters are relentless and very few boars in the local woods survive the hunting season. I think and hope that if any animal knows it is safe on my land it might run here if it is ever chased because the hunt can't come on my land.

Parasites - a bit hard to like

Thursday August 4th 2011
It's been a hectic few weeks and the lack of posts is purely down to that - it certainly isn't because nothing's been happening! The main reason for not posting for weeks is that I've just started my next book. It's called 'Metamorphosis' and is about all the different forms of insect transformation. It will be full of photographs and my studio is already home to a variety of pampered six-legged lodgers. Hopefully the text will explain a lot of the lesser known aspects of how evolution came up with total changes of body shape... all very exciting, and my next two years work sorted - excellent!

I know it's not an insect, but the delightful creature in the photo is a Gordian worm. A couple of days ago I rescued a bush cricket from our pool and put it on the ground. Normally they jump off fairly smartly but this one just sat where I put it for ages until eventually moving off slowly in a rather shell-shocked manner.
A little later I spotted this worm at the bottom of the pool so fished it out too. It is half a metre long and one millimetre in diameter. To tell the truth, I didn't know what it was so had to check it out. Well... it came out of the cricket.

Gordian worms are one of the parasites that control or change the host's behaviour and in the case of these loveable ceatures, when the worm reaches maturity, it makes the host drown itself. As soon as the hapless host makes its suicidal leap into water, the worm works its way out to seek a mate. My pool was a bad choice. It is currently in a tank in my studio.

Close encounters

Saturday June 18th 2011
A magical evening. Just as dusk was falling a young boar came trotting across my field, the first in two years that dared to venture out before dark. It started digging for roots under some bushes so I walked towards it as quickly as I could in a slow non-predatory way, talking quietly all the time to show that I wasn't trying to creep up on it. For a while it kept its distance but gradually let me get closer so I just sat down slowly, all the time talking quiet nonsense.

As it showed no signs of nervousness I left it to get a bag of corn from the studio (always keep some boar treats just in case). It was still snuffling around when I returned and I edged my way as close as possible to empty out the bag of corn. The noise of falling grain was obviously a shock and it ran off a short distance into the woods, peering back towards me through the trees.

I carried on talking soothing mubo-jumbo and slowly he started creeping back, seemingly curious as to what I had put on the ground. Their eyes might not be too good but their noses work just fine and it clearly picked up the scent of food from seven or so metres away. Enthusiastic chomping is a bit of an understatement and I sat down on the grass, keeping a non-threatening distance. Frequently looking up at me (probably wondering what the hell I was rambling on about), it was clear that my presence was no longer a concern so I began to shuffle closer to get some better shots. In the end I was sitting less than two metres away, just sharing the evening, each of us looking at the other until it was too dark to see.

A Sad One Today

Saturday June 11th 2011
Driving through the woods today I spotted this grass snake motionless by the road. I pulled over to see if it was dead and saw that it had some pretty serious injuries. It had clearly been caught by a raptor and either been dropped or the bird had been frightened off by something. The faintest movements showed that it wasn't dead so I put it in the back of the car to attempt some rescue surgery when I got home. When I opened the car door again it had hidden itself under the seat so there was clearly a bit of life left in it. However, when I started cleaning it up I realised that the protruding flesh (circled) was actually its heart. Only minutes but by the time I had fetched the medical stuff it was too late. It would almost certainly have died even if I'd managed to get the heart back in but you have to try!

Thursday June 9th 2011
It's the first dry, sunny day in a week and I came over to the studio to grab my gear and get shooting. The first thing I noticed was a cluster of tell-tale droppings on the floor by my door mat. Looking up I saw this little chap (or chapess) sleeping between the beams above my door.

It's hard to tell from this whether it's a Daubenton's or Greater Mouse-eared bat but hopefully I'll get some better shots later (difficult balancing on a ladder with tripod on table and trying to get light into a 'V' shape between the beams!) without disturbing it's slumbers.

It's been quite busy amidst the beams this morning. A pair of Black Redstarts have been rearing a single chick just a metre away from the bat. This morning I watched it fly out of the nest for the first time. Sadly I haven't taken any shots of nest activity because Redstarts are nervous birds and the parents became quite agitated every time I walked by. It is surprisingly common for birds to completely desert their brood if they have been frightened. Golden rule in nature photography, "The animal's welfare is more important than the shot!" Another situation where you have to put away the camera and just enjoy the experience.