Wildlife Photographic Journals

Bunting Bonanza

This is a follow-on from my previous post recounting my search for the sadly declining Corn Bunting (see here for previous post). Having finally located some birds I decided to return to the second area I had discovered for another camera session with these wonderful songsters.

Often when you find some obliging birds its pays to return for further sessions. Through repeated visits you learn the character of a species which in turn helps refine your fieldcraft and approach. The phrase 'make hay while the sun shines' seems apt as I was amongst the mid-summer crops of an extensive area of agricultural land.

It did not take me long to home in on the characteristics jangling song in the early dawn light. I found a bird in full song about 100m away from where I had photographed one during my previous visit.

The bright but overcast conditions provided some excellent and very even lighting conditions. As before the bird was regularly flitting between a select number of song perches.

My favourite song perch was a clump of flowering thistle so I spent the majority of the visit concentrating on this area. The purple flowers providing an extra dash of colour to the photos.

Overall it was a very productive few hours in the early morning, with only a small sample of the images taken shown here. I will no doubt return to the crop fields again next summer, now I have located the birds, and hope to try and get some flight photographs. This will not be easy but I know it will definitely be fun and a pleasure to spend some more time in the close proximity to these charismatic farmland birds.