David has just spent a few days in Devon alternating between Stover Country Park and Dartmoor.  His aim was to capture something of the autumn and enjoy being creative with his camera.  Most of the photos below are of fungi from the top down they are yellow stag'shorn, false death cap, scarlet waxcap, greyshank boletus and the cap detail of a blusher.  These photos were all taken using focus stacking which frees the photographer to choose an appropriate aperture for a good background whilst also getting the fungus fully sharp. In the middle of this set of photos are two very slow shutter speed shots both with intentional camera movement.  The first is of autumnal leaves on the water surface, the second is a mute swan taking off. The three autumnal views were taken on Dartmoor.  The first shows Haytor from Greator at sunrise; below this is Saddle Tor together with Rippon Tor from Holwell Lawn; the final one is Bowerman's Nose just before sunset.
It's amazing what a bit of autumnal colour will do to a photo!  This fiery effect is created by one autumnal tree in the background.  The birds are: a drake mallard and a tufted duck.
On the way back from the North David and Sarah stayed in Shropshire for a few nights.  The first two photos below show Shrewsbury.  The next two were taken from the New House Farm CL, Church Stretton, where they pitched their van next to a beautiful lake.  The bottom two show a photo of Ashes Hollow (Long Mynd) and a view of Caer Caradoc.  The Shropshire Hills is a beautiful area and great for walking.
David and Sarah have just returned from doing the Coast to Coast long-distance trail.  The walk starts on the Cumbrian coast (St Bees) and ends on the Yorkshire coast (Robin Hoood's Bay).  The walk took 16 days.  The photos below show some snippets from the journey: St Bees lighthouse; Borrowdale; a flooded path they had to cross (it was the wettest September in Cumbria for 70 years!); Patterdale; Swaledale near Reeth at sunrise; Cringle Moor followed by Farndale (both North York Moors); finally Robin Hood's Bay. David has put together a talk about their experience (see the talks page), to listen to the story of their walk please book David to give a talk to your group.
This is the last post of photos from David and Sarah's trip to Norway and concentrates mostly on wading birds in the Arctic.  The two views on the top left show Nesseby church and then fish drying racks at Vestre Jakobselv, both on the shore of Varangerfjord.  The top two birds are whimbrel, photographed in Varanger National Park and a stunning female red necked phalarope, a wading bird which spends most of its time on water. On the third row we have a platform nest built for an oystercatcher; locals put these in place to protect the oystercatchers from ground predators such as stoats, otters and foxes.  To the right we see a wood sandpiper, a wader which breeds widely across the Arctic and which passes through the UK in late summer.  B elow this we have two waders which are commonly found in Britain during winter but here we see them in breeding plumage: dunlin and bar-tailed godwit.  Below these we have two photos of male ruffs, which look stunning in their breeding finery. The bottom row shows two mammal species.  To the left, a pair of otters fighting and to the right an Arctic fox which happens to be moulting from its winter to summer coat.
Some more photos from David's trip.  The first shows a museum building in Vardo, on the coast of Varangerfjord, this and most other buildings are covered in nesting kittiwakes.  This is probably one reason why the locals make a lot of kittiwake nesting structures, such as we see in the image below (this is made from plastic fishing crates).  Below that is a pair of drake goosanders, one with its beak wide open revealing its 'saw-bill', handy for catching slippery fish.  On the right we have a pair of red throated divers; a great crested grebe, with chicks on its back, and a barnacle goose.
Below are some more images from Norway, these mostly show passerines (another name for perching birds).  There is one view and that is of the shelter at Dolmen viewpoint which overlooks Vardo and in the distance we can see Russia.  There are some fantastic shelters around Varanger and this is probably the most colourful.  The birds are: Lapland bunting, a striking bird of the tundra; a red-throated pipit which is found on the wetter areas of the tundra, its slightly orange throat helps to distinguish it from the meadow pipit which is commoner; a redpoll, this is a female with a red forehead and black bib; a fieldfare, these are common all over Norway and in the winter many of them head for the UK; a hooded crow sunning itself, you can see the nictitating membrane over its eye.
Continuing the photos from Norway, below David has posted a selection of snowy images from around Varanger (in north east Norway).  In that part of Norway they had some unusual weather last winter, starting with freezing rain and ending with a late deep covering of spring snow.  So when David and Sarah arrived in early June there was more snow than usual.  Below we see two landscape photos taken on high ground just to the west of Varanger National Park.  Then we have a shorelark (aka horned lark), a bird which can be seen in the UK during winter but only in small numbers.  To the right of that is a Temminck's stint, in pursuit of a fly on the snow.  Then we have a male willow grouse and a long-tailed skua in flight.  Below those are a female ptarmigan peeping out from a snow drift and a drake red-breasted merganser on a partly frozen lake.  The bottom row features a male ptarmigan, calling, and a red-throated diver.
The landscape photos below show the view from and then of the hotel that Sarah and David stayed in at Hamn i Senja.  The wildlife photos show: a reindeer (it's pushing it a bit to call this 'wildlife' because the reindeer are farmed even though they roam freely); a stoat (there were plenty of stoats in the area around Hamn though seeing them was a bit of a lottery, photographing them even more so!); a meadow pipit, beautifully perched on a series of fence posts; a pair of black guillemots with one displaying to the other; a purple sandpiper in breeding plumage (we get them in the UK during winter when they look a little less well-marked); finally a drake red-breasted merganser in flight.  Both the red breasted merganser and the goosander are quite common in Arctic Norway, thouth they are never very approachable!
David and Sarah have just returned from a trip to Norway.  They visited four areas: Tromso (with Sommaroy and Senja); Varanger; Alesund and Hardangerfjord (with Bergen).  The first two of these areas were partly focussed on wildlife so over the next few weeks David will post some photos from these parts of the trip. Below we see photos of Tromso with its colourful waterside buildings; a beach on the island of Sommaroy and a mountain peak (Husfjellet) and fjord on the dramatic island of Senja. The photos of wildlife show a common gull calling (these really are the commonest gull in Norway); a black guillemot landing on the sea; a male pied flycatcher displaying to its partner (though it looks like it's trying to measure the broken branch); a pair of kittiwakes having an aerial battle; a stunning male bluethroat in song; an oystercatcher posing next to a rusty old mooring ring; and finally, for now, a male willow grouse (the equivalent of our red grouse).
Over the last couple of weeks, during the evenings, David has been photographing some fox cubs that have been using one of the fields on his smallholding. The vixen has had an incredible six cubs and though she has occasionally come out with them (see top right photo below) she usually goes hunting on her own.
David spent a morning at Penhale with friends in search of grizzled skippers.  They found a few, most were quite flighty but this one, found early in the morning, posed on a cowslip and stayed still long enough for a few photos.  On the right is the larva of a drinker moth, this was quite a big beast, maybe about 4 cm long.
David has some photos in a new exhibition at Penlee House, Gallery and Museum in Penzance, open from 7th May to 4th October.  The exhibition entitled 'Birds: The Art of Cornwall's Birdlife' features artwork in various media from the artists of the Newlyn School to contemporary artists including Kurt Jackson and some photography by David.  Here is one example, this shows black headed gulls in flight and was taken with a shutter speed of 1/10th of a second giving it a creative feel, very much like the impressionistic painting that it sits beside in the exibition.
It is nice to see some birds doing really well.  Each year the number of firecrests breeding in Cornwall seems to increase, and this is a fantastic little bird.  In fact it is the smallest bird in the UK and getting a photograph of a singing male is not easy.  This is David's latest effort.
David has been photographing the bullfinches which visit his feeder.  They sometimes fly a predictable path from a tree to the feeder allowing David to pre-focus his camera at a set spot to capture them in flight.  But even with 30 frames per second and pro-capture it is a bit hit and miss!  As an example of the technical details the female in flight (right) was taken with a 200mm lens, shutter speed 1/8000th sec and aperture f6.3.  The required ISO was 3200 so some noise reduction has been applied.  David is using a hide for these photos and the birds are coming very close (the images are only slightly cropped).  To be honest these bullfinches are almost tame enough to feed from his hand!
As promised, here are some of the photos taken recently from the photography hides established by Alan McFadyen of Scottish Photography Hides, in Dumfries.  Alan is an incredibly ingenious and industrious man, David and his friends who went with him are very grateful for his help, generosity and support throughout their visit. The photos show: kingfisher emerging from a dive with a fish (fast shutter of 1/8000th sec); kingfisher diving down (slow shutter of 1/100th sec); red squirrel with hazelnut; red squirrel jumping towards camera; great spotted woodpecker carrying a hazelnut; male sparrowhawk; pine marten; badger. This is a very small selection of the images David took.  If you belong to a photo group and would like to see more please contact him for a talk.  Later in 2025 David will put together a talk featuring images from this trip as well as Spain and his summer trip (more on that in a few months).