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Well who expected 2020 to be like it has? It has been a year of change, uncertainty and anxiety for many, but the natural world goes on and I have tried to spend as much time as possible out photographing the roe deer once again. I may have not been able to lead my overseas photography tours for Wildlife Worldwide, but I just love being in the field with wildlife and capturing images. I hope you enjoy looking through this year's imagery of my beloved roe deer.   This year I struggled to find any males to start with, instead focusing on a number of different females who had hidden their young around the estate I photograph on.    As summer intensified and the crops turned to the golden browns, the roe deer rut was in full swing and allowed me the opportunity to photograph roe bucks in their prime.    I am looking forward to 2021 to hopefully spend some time with the roe deer once again. They have become a big part of my life and probably what I am best known for within the UK.
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For many years I have struggled to find a family of rural foxes which I was able to photograph. Most rural foxes, and rightly so, are very wary of people and I usually don't want to disturb them. This year though, I stuck gold when out cycling, I cam across a family of foxes sunbathing on a rural lane, so I decided to head back to photograph them. Upon arriving at the site I couldn't see anything, but I decided to stick it out and I was richly rewarded ...        As you can see, even a rural road gets traffic. Each time a car appeared, all of the cubs jumped into the hedgerow, taking cover in their earth and keeping out of trouble. Sadly, only a few days after I took the photo above, I found the body of this cub hidden in the hedge. It had been hit by a car and purposefully placed out of sight, it was a devastating blow and I was unable to photograph the family again - rightly so, the remaining cubs were very wary. It just goes to show the fragility of the natural world and the massive negative impact humanity has on the natural world.
As those of you that follow my work regularly will know I spend my summers photographing a number of different species, but one I always return to is the roe deer. This species of deer (native to the UK) are particularly elusive, but are surely the most beautiful of species found here in the UK. I have spent many years perfecting my stalking and am very proud of the images I have been able to capture in the past. This year I really feel that my work with the deer as at another level and I am really pleased with the results. The only downside is that after an incident I have been unable to run any workshops – my sincerest apologies to those that wanted to join me this year. Anyway, I will now just let the images do the talking – I hope you enjoy them …           I hope you enjoyed looking through the above, I just wish I hadn't been driven away from the site for a period of time. Hopefully in 2020 I can offer the opportunity to come out with me once again.
I explore an area of the South Downs National Park which is rich in wildlife, with a wide variety of species. However, red fox are a species which are particularly hard to photograph in rural areas and here it is no different. I have been trying to find a fox den for years, but without any luck. At the start of May I was walking down a track which is rarely used. The grass was already high and bending over the tyre marks, but there some fifty yards away was a fox cub. At first I thought the poor thing must have passed away, but as I crept up to where it was, I noticed it was breathing. I sat back and watched it shuffle a couple of times, trying to get comfortable and so I slowly made my approach. To my astonishment, the fox cub stayed fast asleep, the ears didn’t even twitch as I crept ever closer. Eventually I was probably ten yards away and I just sat there watching. What an incredible privilege, what joy I had over the next fifteen moments or so. o edit.   Eventually the cub woke up, realised I was a potential threat and trotted off into the woods. I knew at this age the cub couldn’t be far from the den so I headed up into the woods and within minutes I had found the earth. I sat and waited by a nearby tree and was then treated to the following close encounter. I will never fully be able to comprehend the close approach of one of four fox cubs that evening, but it was an encounter that will stick with me for a long time.   |