Wildlife photographs

I'm rather new to wildlife photography. Since going digital, around 2000, I made do mainly with a compact camera with a very modest zoom. It was quite good for most purposes, but useless for wildlife. However, early this year I treated myself to my first DSLR, complete with a 75-300mm zoom. 

Here are a few wildlife photographs I have taken in the last few months.

I took this in June 2012. It's a young crow that posed very obligingly near our kitchen door. I have the feeling that newly-fledged birds aren't all that wise to the dangers around them and for that reason this one hung around long enough for me to photograph it at leisure.

One afternoon (in July 2012), as quite often happens, I spotted two roe deer as they walked into our garden. This time they went straight into a sheltered area where we grow vegetables and have few fruit trees and raspberry canes. Because our vegetable patch is hidden from view by a woodpile, I was able to sneak up quietly behind the woodpile and reveal myself with my camera ready, zoom set to 300mm. I was in luck - this young stag was just the other side of the woodpile, feasting on raspberry leaves. I was able to snap him before he spotted me. I never imagined that I could get so close to a wild deer.

Both these pictures were published in our local newspaper

I've also been trying to photograph insects. I don't as yet have a macro lens but I have a set of close-up lenses that screw on to the end of my normal lenses, like filters. No great success so far but enough promising shots to keep me interested.


This is the one that got away. (September 2012)
 

Better luck with this one. I must have used a close-up lens with this one. Focusing is so difficult for this sort of thing that I have to use weight of numbers to stand a chance of getting a decent shot. I could never have contemplated this in the days before digital photography - film was too expensive to use in that way. September 2012.

This Red Admiral is looking a bit the worse for wear. September 2012.

A Comma on a fig leaf. September 2012.