Back in Iceland after 24 years, I focused on finding retail partners for Opticron. Flew EasyJet to Reykjavik, explored Garður and went whale watching, spotting Fin and Humpback Whales. After enjoying some local craft beer, I stayed in Grindavik, checking out the volcanic activity while birdwatching nearby. Good times!
The Siberian Rubythroat, once a rare sight in the UK, remains a prized bird among British birders. Over the years, personal encounters in Shetland, the Netherlands, and Sweden have yielded joyous and frustrating experiences. Observations highlight the bird’s elusiveness, while moments of solitude foster a deeper appreciation for its beauty and rarity.
I’ve said lots of times that I “Don’t twitch off mainland Great Britain”. I have broken that principle twice before, for Siberian Rubythroat on Shetland 10 years ago and Sandhill Crane on Orkney in September 2009. The Crane twitch had the added bonus of connecting with Yellow-billed Cuckoo. The distance, time involved and of course the expense of getting off mainland is often too much for me to consider. Not to be forgotten is the ability to put a 3-4-man team together, which is something I’m finding hard to do, especially since the retirement of my twitching partner for the…
It is now over 12 months since the world changed and we entered an extended period of enforced soporific stasis due to Covid-19. So much has changed, social & family life exists only online, so does so much of my work life. Thankfully I have now been vaccinated with my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. I just hope it is not too long until Mrs G receives her inoculation and we can start to plan a route back to a post-Covid normality. Birding has been ‘parked’ over the last year. I still don’t think that birding is a form…
I made the Mid-winter Jewels post https://wp.me/pa4Ku3-gd about December rarities I’d seen and realised I’d forgotten about a magical three week period in 2016 when I photographed three rare thrushes in a three week period in December. I had to dig deep to unearth the images as I had not saved the original Raw files in the usual place nor in my main photo archive. Instead they all laid in a folder on a portable HDD that I had filled. A year and a day since ticking the Crag Martin in Chesterfield on 5th December 2015 as it flew around…
It is almost a year since I posted a selection of images of wildlife taken in my small urban garden under the title of Garden Safari. The enforced absence from work from the March 23rd 2020 Covid-19 lockdown coincided with a period of sustained good weather, this meant that I spent more time in the garden and walking around our neighbourhood. During the first lockdown air traffic reduced to less than 95% of normal in the skies over Liverpool and the sunny days lead to clear night nights. The UK Govt stated that we were allowed 1 period of exercise…
As I write the start of this it is January 1st 2021 and I haven’t been birding for over three months, and have only been out three times since the start of the pandemic. I know that most people will think that birding is a solitary hobby so why lock yourself away. Simple! I just don’t want to catch this. Birders just find it so hard stay away from each other in the field, especially on a twitch. The result of this inactivity is a complete lack of images to play with, edit and file. This has led me to…
It all started so well! It was the year I was determined to enjoy my photography again and get my mojo back. I was determined to get out more birding, attempt some nightscapes with a new lens and I had a stack of gigs lined up with photo passes and a meet & greet for an intimate gig with Joanne Shaw Taylor at the Liverpool Arts Club. Harnessing that enthusiasm I was at Crosby Marine Lake on a bright and sunny January 3rd for a Long-tailed Duck. It was yet another 1st winter female, oh how I long for another…
The last time I watched a Lammergeier I was parked alongside a dry river bed, the river had washed away the road bridge in the wet season. We were having an al fresco breakfast on the road back North from Yabelo, Ethiopia. Breakfast consisted of sweet bread rolls, fresh pineapple and mini bananas and was the the best breakfast I had during my 2003 trip. The Lammergeier flew direct over head and was about thirty feet above me. Huge, immense and unforgettable. Fast forward 17 years and the next sighting. Yorkshire, yeah really, Yorkshire. A Juvenile that had previously been…
My Social Media feeds have been reminding me all week that I’m usually somewhere warm and tropical at this time of the year. Eight out of the last ten years I’ve been away with the camera. Each year there is the usual angst about what to take and what to leave at home. As I never put camera equipment in the hold of the aircraft it means everything has to stay in the cabin. Airlines have got stricter about the weight of cabin bags and often weigh them. Jeanette and I have the same discussions about how we carry all…
Today was supposed to be a ‘payback’ day for disappearing yesterday to photograph Waxwings, my penance was to paint the bathroom ceiling and door. A day of sanding, filling, painting & cleaning began whilst listening to music and occasionally joining in with the lyrics. Mrs G even went out to get additional supplies to keep me employed with my brushes, getting every possible minute out of my DIY day. I’m a reluctant painter, but once I’ve started I like to crack on and get it done. With the ceiling filled and painted I started on the door jamb when I…
January 2019, not an image, not a shutter press, a photographic non-event. Lack of opportunity or inspiration or whatever but not a single picture recorded by my cameras. Of course, there is always the useless images I may have taken with the iPhone but not worthy of saving. So, I was always going to go and do something this weekend with the promise of decent light and weather, but what? Waxwings! It has been a good few years since I have photographed Waxwings, and, although it has not been a bumper winter for them in the UK there have been…
We’ve lived in our house for 25 years and I’ve always kept an eye on what wildlife we have had in the garden during that time. Over the years I’ve had a lot of different birds either fly over or land in the garden. A couple of years after we moved in during cold winter I watched 5 species of thrush feeding at the same time on my windfall apples. Five years ago on Christmas Day I finally connected with Waxwing, although this was observed ‘from’ the garden. I remember one Spring we had a pair of amorous & noisy…
Chris Galvin 