Category: Genres

Dowanhill Bop

Dowanhill Bob, our local sparrowhawk, has been ruling the roost in the West End this winter, terrorising our garden residents, including siskins, goldfinches, robins, chaffinches, great tits, coal tits, blue tits, tree sparrows and even wood pigeons. The only birds that stand up to him and chase him away are the crows.

Our garden used to be teeming with little birds, but since Bob has appeared on the scene, it has been extremely quiet. And when the birds are in our garden, they are visibly on edge, looking round from a branch in the undergrowth, swooping into the seed feeder, grabbing a sunflower heart, and swooping off into the undergrowth to eat it. A complete contrast to last winter, when literally hundreds of birds were in our garden feasting on the seeds, fighting for a spot on the feeder.

We have been seeing Bob daily, when he swoops into Athol lane and perches on the tree at the back of our garden or sometimes on top of the seed feeder in the middle of our garden. Unfortunately, the tree in the back is too far away to get any decent shots, but when he is on the seed feeder, he is within good range as you can see.

He is lovely coloured male and hopefully I’ll be able to get some shots of him in flight soon.

Gomeran geology

The geology of La Gomera is stunning and characterises the volcanic island.

Devastated by fire

A typical shot of the blacked laurel forest on La Gomera caused by the devastating fire on the island in August 2012. This is the worst fire in the history of the island, spreading uncontrollably fast due to the high winds and tinder-dry vegetation and forced the evacuation of nearly 1,000 people by boat.

Unfortunately, the fire consumed about 1,853 acres of ancient woodland in the Garajonay nature reserve, a Unesco World Heritage site, some of which is believed to have been in existence for millions of years.

Precarious Rock Stairs

Here are a few shots of the precarious stairs along the steep cliffs behind El Castillo on the edge of Playa Vallehermoso, La Gomera, battered by the rough seas hitting the North Coast of the island.

I believe this would make a great location for a block buster pirate movie, with the stairs leading out of a pirate’s treasure cave, with treasure hunters scrambling across it chased by pirates’ skeletons protecting the treasure.

Maybe that’s just bananas. These stairs are actually part of the remains leading to the large platforms leading out over the ocean to load bananas onto the ships. The North coast of the island shows the tell tale signs of this, once thriving, banana trade, but to anyone seeing the cliffs, rocks and surf, especially in rough seas, it seems to be impossible to load a ship on these shores.

Goosander (Mergus Merganser)

While walking along the River Kelvin, halfway between the Botanics and Kelvinbridge, I spotted a pair of Goosanders standing on the rocky shallows in the middle of the river. The drake had it’s head tucked under his wings, probably having a well earned siesta on the chilly afternoon, but the duck was busy cleaning herself.

I think that, unlike with most ducks (and birds), the duck (female) is actually more beautiful than the drake (male). And I just love the combination of the detail of her feathers with the turned head with crown.

Our ‘urban’ sparrowhawk

We have seen this Sparrowhawk swooping through our garden for some time now, but three times this week, I’ve actually walked into the kitchen seeing it perched on a branch less than a foot away from the kitchen window. On all three occasions, it had, unfortunately, flown away by the time I got my camera from the hall and sneaked back in to take a close up shot.

This afternoon, it flew into the tree at the bottom of our garden, perched high up, waiting for prey such as the tits and finches that frequent our seed feeders. I took a few shots, although it was just too far away for a real cracker.

Now my camera is ready in the kitchen, ready for the next encounter. I may actually need to park myself with my laptop at the kitchen table tomorrow, keeping my eyes peeled, as a Sparrowhawk swooping down to catch a garden bird is a mouthwatering prospect.

Moved by the sunset

This afternoon was the third time this week that Lola and I headed into Mugdock Wood for a wander and hopefully some photography of the devastation of fallen trees. Even after a week of cleanup, it still amazes me how much damage the last gales have caused in the city and the country side. I have never seen so much devastation and so many trees (and chimneys!) blown over.

On all three wanders, after an otherwise dry day, the rain started as soon as we left the car and headed along the tracks into the woods. Today, we retraced our steps from our previous wander, walking down the hill to the Allander Water and following the Wet Highland Way for half a mile or so.

The intention was to retake some shots (with the tripod this time) of a piece of bright red and orange bark that had fallen into a mossy hole in a broken tree. While Lola was running with a collie through the undergrowth I mounted the camera on the tripod and set about shooting the striking piece of bark.

Unfortunately, we started off too late and the light was gone, so with the combination of very long shutter times and dogs thumping past the tripod standing on very soft undergrowth, the results were a tad disappointing.

The rain started to get worse so we headed back and up the hill, where we got another photo opportunity, as the sky started to turn purple and red with the setting sun. Along our trek up the hill, I took quite a few shots of the silhouette of the birch trees against the colourful sky, both with a ‘steady’ camera and intentional camera movements.

Must go back soon, hoping that the striking piece of bark is still there and that third time is lucky.

Classic Cameras: Ensign Midget

This is the first post in a new series to show you some of the cameras I have in my antique and classic camera collection, starting with one of my smallest cameras, the Ensign Midget.

The Ensign Midget is truly a pocketable camera and is still smaller than most of the modern small digital compacts. The Midget was launched in the mid 1930’s with the wonderful slogan “Wear it always… like your watch” and was manufactured until 1941 when the involvement with the war forced Ensign to stop manufacturing most of it’s cameras. You can read up on the full history and the different models on the Ensign historical site: Ensign Midget.

What makes this a treasured little gem in my collection, is that in addition to the miniature camera, I also have the original leather cover, box, manual, leaflets and even two rolls of film in their original box.

Mayan Arches at Uxmal

One of the most distinctive features found in Mayan architecture is the Mayan arch, a corbelled arch that spans entrances and vaults. As the Maya never discovered the true arch, the Maya were limited to construct single storey buildings with narrow, if sometimes long, rooms.

The Mayan arch can only support a limited amount of weight and requires significantly thickened walls and an abutment of other stone or fill to counteract the effects of gravity and to avoid each side of the archway to collapse inwards.

The description in the dictionary of a Mayan arch is not easy to comprehend: a corbel arch is constructed by offsetting successive courses of stone at the springline of the walls so that they project towards the archway’s center from each supporting side, until the courses meet at the apex of the archway, often capped with flat stones.

A picture paints a thousand words, so rather than trying to explain or visualise the Mayan Arch from this string of words, I have selected a set of images of Mayan Arches taken at our last visit to Uxmal to illustrate the Mayan Arch and it’s construction.

It is worthwhile to view the above image of the Mayan Arch at the House of Pigeons in full screen mode, and to zoom in and navigate around.

Is it a squirrel? Is it a cuckoo?

First, the facts. The squirrel cuckoo or ‘kip cho’ in Mayan or ‘cuco ardilla’ in Spanish is a largish bird measuring up to 50cm in length, has reddish plumage on the upper parts and grey on the lower, and is characterised by it’s long tail with white markings.

While admiring the massive crocodiles (from a very safe distance of course!) found at Lake Cobá, I heard an unusual bird song coming from the nearby jungle. Not that an unusual bird song is out of the ordinary, as the song of nearly all the birds in the Yucatán are alien to me. So I decided to turn my back on the crocodile to sneak to a hole in the stone wall on the edge of the jungle with the aim to find the source of the sound.

I spotted the singing bird with a striking long tail on some rocks in the undergrowth very quickly. Unfortunately, it was shy and hiding just too far away from me within the jungle to get anything other than a heavily cropped ‘evidence’ or ‘identification’ shot (below, middle). While listening to the bird’s song and hoping that it would come closer, I noticed a slight movement in my peripheral vision.

With a quick refocus, I spotted it’s mate on a branch close by. Luckily I got a brief but very welcome opportunity to take a couple of shots (bottom left and top) of this cuckoo hopping from one branch to another, before it flew to a branch close to it’s mate (below right) before the pair disappeared out of sight, deeper into the jungle.

The Mayan people

What better to do at Christmas when the wind howls through the chimney and the rain lashes against the windows than to look at pictures from our travels to warmer climates. In other words, an opportunity, or should I say another attempt, to finally sort through the 2,500 images from our visit to the Yucatán and Ciudad de México last Christmas.

These three images of Mayan people will be the start in a series of posts covering our travels through México in December 2010. With our travels through the Yucatán we were partly retracing our steps from January 2001, so I will attempt to find some of the old photos to show you the fenominal change this region has gone through in a decade.

I took the image of the Mayan women with a young child at the market on Plaza Major in Mérida, a colonial city founded by the Spanish Conquistador Francisco de Montejo. Over the past decade, Mérida has changed from a characterful, quiet colonial town  to an extremely noise, dirty city with the bustle of a multi million population.

The old Mayan women was folding the hand embroidered handkerchiefs that she was selling to the tourists in the shade beside the great ball court at archaeological site at Chichén-Itzá. We brought a massive smile to her face by buying half a dozen of these traditional coloured souvenirs without haggling too much.

One of the most notable scenes in the Yucatán is to see the children play happily on the street wherever you go. I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw boys play football on the the streets in Glasgow, a sad enditement to our changed society dominated by computer games. These bare footed boys and girl with flip flops were playing football on the road leading from the Villas Arqueológicas to the historical site at Cobá.

Urban cormorant

While taking Lola out for a walk along the River Kelvin in the West End of Glasgow, I spotted two cormorants sitting on a derelict railway pillar in the middle of the river. Even though it was a very damp, dark and overcast afternoon, I took my camera out of the bag to make an attempt at taking some shots of these magnificent large water birds.

It was so dull that I had to crank the ISO up to 3200 to get the exposure, while still only achieving a very slow 1/80 at f5.6 handheld using my 70-200mm lens with 2x extender. Above all, it was not easy getting a clear view of either of the two cormorants due to the straggly trees obscuring my view and thorny branches swinging in my face, but I eventually managed to get a few good shots of both birds.

While taking some shots of one of the cormorants, I noticed a movement on the far bank and was surprised to see an urban fox out on the hunt in the middle of the afternoon. Unfortunately, the fox disappeared very quickly out of view after I had managed two shots with the cormorant in focus and the fox out of focus in the undergrowth. The best one of the two (above) probably qualifies for a ‘spot the fox’ competition.

The apparent stalking of the fox and vulnerability of the cormorant in the above shot is in fact an illusion. The two birds were quite safe, sitting high and dry (ok, not quite so dry) on a 10 foot high pillar in the middle of the river, with the fox merely passing on the far away river bank, as the last image illustrates.

Once again, today has proved: never leave home without a camera, irrespective of what the weather is like.