Standing up for Nature
Oscar Dewhurst: A few years ago I spent several days photographing Cormorants in Hyde Park, where they would fish underneath the Serpentine Bridge. The great thing about this location was the shade from the bridge meant the water would appear completely black in the resulting photos. This was taken as the bird surfaced from an…
This is an adult Great Black Hawk (Buteogallus urubitinga) the split second before snatching a fish from the water. Its bizarre scientific name urubitinga is a native Brazilian (Tupi) word for this bird. It is found in wooded and watery habitats throughout Central and South America. Taken with Nikon D500 Nikkor 300mm f4 lens f4…
Oscar writes: Another winter looks like it will go by without me getting the chance to photograph anything in the snow. The last time I did was at the start of 2013, when I was working on some local foxes. Here is one taken just as the snow was getting going. School had been cancelled…
I photographed this male Jaguar (known as Geoff) a few seconds after he had made an unsuccessful attempt to catch a large Caiman. He pounced and disappeared under the water but emerged only with a mouthful of Water Hyacinth. I photographed him in Brazil’s Pantanal region. Taken with Nikon D500 Nikkor 300mm f4 lens f4…
Oscar writes: During my university term before Christmas I managed to get out for a couple of days and do some photography. As part of this I spent a few hours watching and photographing some Waxwings that were feeding on berries around some houses. The light wasn’t great, but it was nice to get them…
The bright yellow Meadowlarks of North America are familiar but less familiar is this scarlet breasted species from southern South America. This male had just caught a large ant and was photographed in Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. Taken with Nikon D500 Nikkor 300mm f4 lens with 1.4 converter f6.3 1/1250 ISO…
Every autumn I try and spend a few early mornings in Richmond Park to photograph the deer rut. On this occasion the forecasted clear skies had not materialised, but were instead replaced with thick cloud. I still managed a couple of images, though, such as this stag roaring with grass in his antlers. Nikon D800,…
I don’t know what it is about Capybaras but many species of bird and animal use them as a perch, and they don’t seem to mind. In fact there is Tumblr page dedicated to animals sitting on Capybaras. This one is a Wattled Jacana, sometimes known as a Lilytrotter but maybe more appropriately Capybaratrotter. There…
Seeing cold weather forecast overnight, I made sure I was at Richmond Park early the next morning to try and get some images of ducks on the ice. As not all the water on the ponds was frozen, most of the ducks were concentrated in the few remaining areas of water, but I did manage…
These are the smallest of the three steamer ducks and the only one that can fly. It is also the only species that is found on freshwater lakes (but can occur on the sea). They are called steamer ducks because the two flightless species do the butterfly stroke across the surface moving rather like a…