Photographing Buzzards

This week I have travelled across the country to Leicester, as I have been invited to spend the day in the wild buzzard hide by Des from Captivating Nature.

Although the buzzard is the most common bird of prey here in the UK and can be found almost everywhere, it is an incredibly shy and flighty bird, so getting a decent image out in nature is very hard to do, which is where dedicated photography hides like this one from Captivating Nature comes into play.

Now I know there are those of you out there who are against using hides, yes, I do read the comments, that’s fine, you do you, but for certain instances, like photographing wildlife that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to otherwise, a dedicated hide is a great way to get those close up encounters that would be difficult to achieve on your own.

To minimise any disturbance to the birds, the hide is only open 3 days a week, and you also get driven out to the hide from the main parking area, so for those of you who maybe find lots of walking with your gear a bit difficult, then you won’t need to worry about that on your visit.

The hide can fit up to 4 people and is kitted out with some comfy, adjustable chairs, and although I didn’t need to use it on my visit, I did spy a diesel heater in the corner for those colder days, and there is also a portable toilet (though you can use the facilities near the parking area before and after your visit). The one thing that you will need to make sure you bring with you is a sturdy tripod to support your camera. I brought along my new Sirui SVS60 tripod with the S3 fluid video head (there will be a review on this coming soon).

Once I had got set up, Chris, the farm manager left me and the pigeon he had put out the for the buzzard, to wait and see what arrived. I didn’t need to wait long, as literally as Chris drove out of view, the first buzzard came in and got to work on the pigeon.

If your encounters are anything like mine, when you don’t have the camera on you, the buzzard you have spotted next to the road is happy to sit and stare at you, but the minute you peer though a bush with your lens, it buggers off. So it was amazing to be able to see and sit with one of our most common birds of prey so close.

While in the hide, I made sure to use different focal lengths as well as turn my camera into vertical orientation to get a variety of images.

This was my first time in a hide that uses 1 way glass, and I have to say, I am a convert. To be able to get such a wide and unobstructed field of view was amazing, and it will be hard to go back to a hide that uses scrim netting. The glass was so clear, it was easy to forget that it was even there.

The glass does limit the amount of light and equates to roughly 1 stop of light, so to account got that, you will need to drop your shutter speed or raise your ISO.

I was using the auto ISO function for this setup and was controlling my aperture and shutter speed. For the most part my aperture was wide open, at f6.3, and I was keeping an eye on my shutter speed. Not wanting it to be too slow that I then have motion blur, but not unnecessarily high to need a high ISO setting.

For this first stint, the buzzard was with me for about 20 amazing minutes before flying off back into the woodland.

As the buzzard had moved on, I decided to take this opportunity to move over a bit in the hide, so I would have a slightly different angle on the setup for my next set of images. It was then to waiting for the buzzard to come back in. There were a few smaller birds like robins and great tits that kept me company, as well as a male pheasant.

After almost an hour of waiting, the second buzzed came in, this one was much more golden in colour than the first one. After speaking with Des, I found out that this one was the female and the darker on that was in earlier was the male. It was amazing to see so much colour variation between the two birds.

After initially landing and facing in towards me and the hide and getting some absolutely amazing photos, this buzzard moved around to stand with its back towards me. This allowed me to get some more varied images with this different perspective. I particularly like the ones where the buzzard is looking right at the camera with a beak full of feathers.

It was amazing to be able to spend so much time with these beautiful birds, this second buzzard stayed with me for over an hour. And it was great to see some of their natural behaviour up close, like rubbing their face along the log before moving off.

As the majority of the pigeon had now been eaten, and I was over the moon with what I had been able to capture, I messaged Chris to get collected from the hide.

I am really happy with the images that I captured, and I think I have come away with a good variety of images, and they will definitely be making into my photo book of the year.

So a huge thank you to Des from Captivating Nature for inviting me out to the hide today like I said, I have had an amazing day out here, and if you are interested in visiting this hide, or there is also a barn owl hide here too, they are open and taking bookings via their website.

So thank you very much for watching, I hope you enjoyed tagging along with me and I shall see you in the next video.