The Enchanted World of Yorkshire’s Red Squirrels
Having been to Scotland pretty much annually for the last 8 ish years and booking myself onto a wildlife photography trip in the Cairngorms last year, I have yet to see any of the UK’s elusive Red Squirrels, but that is about to change as Tim got me a day in Paul Fowlie’s Red Squirrel hides in Yorkshire (and I am beyond excited about it!).
We arranged my hide visit for the 15th April, and on the day, I met Paul and followed him to the woodland where the hides are located. It is a little walk down to the hides from the road where we left the cars, winding down through some beautiful woodland.
Once on site, we headed over to the first set-up of the day, jumping squirrels. This was in a small area on the edge of the woodland. I got my tripod set up and, armed with my 70-200 f2.8 GM ii lens, set up my camera. We prefocused the lens in the middle of the jumping station, where the squirrel would be at peak action (hopefully) and flipped it to manual, then we waited for our jumpers to arrive…
As my visit was at the beginning of April, activity was a bit quieter than usual, due to the females looking after this year’s kits. I waited for a good 40 minutes for the first of the squirrels to arrive (Paul did say that this is unusual for them, and they normally come in sooner, though I had a lovely time listing to the forest while waiting). With our first jumper on the platform, and my figure glued to the shutter, I took my first set of jumping images…and not a single one was in focus. Now that was always going to be the case, having prefocused and being at f2.8 for a lovely smooth background, but, this happened time and again. I know a bad workman always blames his tools, but I do feel that I hit the limitations of the A7iv here. It only shoots at 6fps in uncompressed RAW and as my second card is a UHSii, it doesn’t keep up with the cfexpress type A that I have in slot one. I did hit the buffer on my camera (first time ever for that) when our squirrel hesitated on jumping, leaving me to miss the shot … again.
After missing a few times, I stopped down to f5, to allow for a bigger depth of field, and this time I did get one image, hallelujah!
Sony A7iv | 70-200 mm f2.8 GMii | f/5 | 1/1600s | ISO 3200
Having finally got my jumping image, it was onto the dry-stone wall for some portraits. I really love the images that I got here, of the squirrel in classic Red Squirrel pose, and using the lens at f2.8 I was able to really get the squirrel to stand out from the smooth, background.
I was also able to use my wide-angle lens here, a first for me to use when photographing wildlife. Paul placed some hazelnuts onto the wall in front of me, and we waited for a squirrel to come back in. We didn’t have to wait long, and I was able to take my images and I captured an image that I am very proud of and is in my top 3 of the day list (because I can’t pick a favourite). It was then time to head into the hides, first up the reflection pool.
Sony A7iv | 24-70 mm f2.8 GMii | f/6.3 | 1/800s | ISO 4000
I was incredibly excited for this set up, as I have seen many a red squirrel reflection image on Instagram and was eager to capture some amazing images of my own.
Paul gave me the lowdown on all the feed locations and armed me with some hazelnuts to throw into the pool once, the squirrels started to venture in.
It didn’t take long for the squirrels to come to the pool looking for food, and I was able to start capturing my images. I was using the 70-200 f2.8 again here, as it gives me a nice background, and means my ISO isn’t too high as it was quite an overcast day.
There were 4 or so squirrels working their way through the food, and so I had plenty of opportunities to capture some beautiful images of them. I made sure to get some portrait orientated ones as well as landscape.
I made sure I paid attention to where the squirrel was in the image as well, as I wanted to get the reflections spot on and not cut anything off (though I did a couple of times…).
One of my favourite, (again top 3 stuff here) images that I got early on in the hide, was of a squirrel coming down to drink from the water. I made sure that the squirrel was in the centre and off to one side, this meant I got my reflection spot on, but also leaves some negative space for the squirrel to be looking towards.
Sony A7iv | 70-200 mm f2.8 GMii | f/2.8 | 1/2000s | ISO 4000
The squirrels soon munched their way through a lot of the nuts left around the pool, and started to venture into the water. This was brilliant to see first hand and I got some lovely images of them wading through the water in search of more hazelnuts.
It wasn’t just squirrels visiting the pool, there were absolutely loads of Chaffinch, as well as Pheasants, so I made sure I got a couple of images of them as well.
As Paul has been at this location for 8 years, the squirrels were really not phased by me, whizzing past the opening to the hide as they made their way around the pool.
I was in the hide for about an hour and half, and sitting in the hide, watching the squirrels and listening to the bird songs was just mesmerising, and I am over the moon with the images that I created here, but it was time to move onto my last location of the day, the woodland hide.
Sony A7iv | 70-200 mm f2.8 GMii | f/2.8 | 1/2000s | ISO 2500
The woodland hide had a load of perches and props for the squirrels to feed from across two aspects. It was a bit hard to cover both the front and still keep an eye on the side port, so to start with I stuck myself in the corner.
Our first visitor was the woodpecker which was on the footpath sign (such a good prop, need to get one of these for my garden set up), and using the 200-600 for a bit of extra reach, I took my first photos. The Chaffinch had also moved across to this area and I managed to capture an image where the Chaffinch, looks like it is reading the sign which is quite fun.
Sony A7iv | 200-600 G OSS f5/6-6.3 | f/6.3 | 1/640s | ISO 4000
As the squirrels came over, I moved around the hide, creating images as the squirrels used the different props around the hide. I particularly like the one where the squirrel is sticking its head into the tree stump to look for nuts.
I then moved onto the far window in the hide, which has a log that goes right up to the window. The squirrels had started to feed on the nuts at the top of this, so I was hoping to get an image of one on its way up the log to feed.
I managed to capture one, first time, but as the minimum focus on the 200-600 is 2.4 meters once it was close to me, the lens just wouldn’t focus. I waited for another attempt to see if I could get more of an action shot, but the lens was struggling to focus, so I swapped to my trusty 70-200 and was rewarded with some of my favourite images of the day (OK so maybe we have to do a top 5 instead of 3…).
After capturing my action images, I was back using the 200-600, for the further out perches and my aim was now to capture an image of one of the squirrels on the footpath sign. There was a feeder just behind the sign, so they were climbing up and either facing away from me as they fed or, were sitting on the feeder and not on the top of the sign.
Sony A7iv | 200-600 G OSS f5/6-6.3 | f/6.3 | 1/640s | ISO 6400
While waiting for the perfect moment to take my squirrel image, the Chaffinch came in for some food of their own.
And then just before my time was up, one of the squirrels sat perfectly for me and I got my final mage of the day (and another favourite…)
Sony A7iv | 200-600 G OSS f5/6-6.3 | f/6.3 | 1/640s | ISO 5000
It was just amazing being able to spend the day here in the woods with the Red Squirrels. They are so characterful and the whole place felt like a bit of an enchanted woodland. I was sad to have to say goodbye to the squirrels, but incredibly happy with all my images and the overall experience.
If you are looking to photograph some Red Squirrels in the UK, then I highly recommend a visit to Paul Fowlie’s hides in Yorkshire. The set-up that he has here is truly amazing, and it is a place that I would be looking to visit again, in other seasons, so get some more images of these special little creatures.