Dipper

The Dipper is my second favourite bird (after the lapwing). It is a lot to do with the fast flowing mountainous streams they live on, which make such great settings for pictures. This is taken in Wales at a site I first did them at 30 years ago and the nest is still in the same spot. Taken with a slow shutter speed to blur the water and from a hide as Dippers in Wales are not as tame as their Derbyshire cousins. 1/20th at F14. 200 iso. Canon 800mm lens. EOS 1d Mk1V

Pied flycatcher

A Pied flycatcher  singing in Mid-Wales taken with the Canon 800mm lens and 1.4 extender. 800 iso. 1/200th at F8. I have wanted to do this bird singing since passing up the opportunity to do so in Finland many years ago. I had a choice of putting my hide up on some Redpolls or a singing Pied Flycatcher and chose the Redpolls. There was no time to do the flycatcher afterwards.

Goldfinch

My wife comes from North Sumatra and as she puts it “if we see a bird in my village we shoot it”. She had no interest in birds before moving to the U.K. last year, but already she is heavily into photographing them. Her longest stint in a hide so far is 10 hours, just doing woodland birds. Her goldfinch above is all her own work. She set it up and was in the hide alone all day while I got on with the real work of finding new subjects to photograph. 100-400mm lens at 400mm. 1/400th at F8. 800 iso. Canon EOS 1d Mk111. from a permanent wooden hide.