SPRINGTIME BIRD PHOTOGRAPHY
Charlotte Davies
St Andrews really delivers when it comes to wildlife, and this afternoon in early April didn’t disappoint. Goldcrests are teeny tiny birds that are resident in the UK year-round. They’re iconically cute, and have been a personal favourite of mine for many years. As we approach spring and the days become longer, and the light starts to be much more forgiving for photography, we start to be able to go into the cover of trees and still have enough ambient light for a decent photo.
So it was inevitably time to try to photograph some Goldcrests (/procrastinate writing my dissertation).Weighing in at only 5g, and preferring to sit towards the top of tall Pine trees, these little birds can be an absolute pain in the neck to photograph - they rarely sit still for more than a couple of seconds before flitting to another branch. Quite often by the time you’ve wrenched your lens up to try to find it, they’re already out of the viewfinder. But if you get your ear tuned in to their zipping call, and you stand still enough, you might just strike lucky. And that’s exactly what happened the other week - voila, a very gorgeous Goldcrest who came to sit only a couple of metres off the forest floor at the St Andrews Botanic Gardens.
Usually that would be it - one strike of good luck per day - but an hour or so later, I was passing the last of the spring blossoms at the entrance to the garden and this Bullfinch appeared and started pecking through the blossom. So get out there and make the most of Spring and early Summer!
This article first appeared in PRISMA, Issue 5.