Marsh Harriers are my joint favourites, along with short-eared owls, of marshland raptors. Actually, they probably just pip short-eared's to the post. You see, with short-eared's we only really get to see them, in southern England, during the autumn and winter when they venture from their upland breeding grounds to coastal areas to feed, mostly on short-tailed field voles. And some years, we don't see them at all. This is particularly the case if voles are having a bad year. Whereas, with marsh harriers, I see them every time I am on the marshes, regardless of season, but being such a wary bird, I have very few decent images of them. So, this year I will make great effort to turn this around.
My friend on the marshes, Phil, has spent much of his life working on this area, watching and more recently, photographing the wildlife. Living just a mile or so away enables Phil to spend a great deal of time on the marshes and has observed some wonderful spectacles. Although, to his own admission, he is a beginning photographer, his images are testament to how field craft plays a massive part in this field of photography. He has shown me some quite astonishing pictures of weasels, snipe, barn owls and marsh harriers.
I'd just like to point out that there has been no cropping done to these images whatsoever. Some may think this needn't be pointed out, but as a wildlife photography blog, I think it does. If it were a blog simply highlighting the beauty of nature, showing various characteristics of the species, then fair enough, go mad with the cropping, but since there are others (hopefully!) viewing this who take pictures themselves, I am sure some would be wondering just how much, if any cropping, does occur in my images, given that these birds are so wary. The maximum I carry out is around 10% since I shoot for a stock library, the more you crop, the more pixels you lose. Hence with these images, one might argue more could have been done to obtain a tighter, more'accurate' composition. But what I take is what you see, more or less! Please feel free to post your comments on this issue should you have thoughts about this.
Phil took me off the beaten track to a reed bed frequented by them. They are so used to seeing his 4x4 that they took no notice of us at all, as long as we stayed inside that is. I had my closest views yet, in all the years I have been photographing on the marshes myself. At one point, a female flew within 15 meters of us. Quite astonishing and breathtaking. There markings are so varied from one individual to another. Females, as pictures here are predominantly brown with a creamy cap whereas males are much paler.
All were taken with a Nikon D300, 300mm f2.8 AFS VR with 1.4x tele-converter, iso 400 at around 1/1250 at f5.6.
The late afternoon sun worked a treat in illuminating the underside of these birds. I hope to get much better pictures over the coming months and of course, all developments will be posted here.
