Date: December 2017
Location: Cahuita, Costa Rica
Camera Settings: IS0 200 – F/5.6 – 1/40
A huge toucan just metres from the hiking path in Cahuita National Park. As close as I was going to come to the perfect ‘money shot’. The rustles in the trees were so loud at first that we assumed it was a howler or capuchin monkey but then came the flash of red and the yellow bill. Unmistakable.
Date: December 2017
Location: Cahuita, Costa Rica
Camera Settings: ISO 100 – F/7.1 – 1/80.
Every time I looked up in Costa Rica I saw some kind of wildlife in the canopy. Although its yellow and grey resident birds were slightly harder to spot. Movement or a flash of their yellow bellies gave them away. This king bird was perched at the edge of a field in Cahuita, a town on the Carribean Coast, blending in perfectly with its surroundings.
Date: June 2019
Location: London, UK
Camera Settings: ISO 100 – F/5.6 – 1/250.
I love starlings. Even in the most urban environment (this one was strolling in the Southbank alongside London’s River Thames) they add such a flash of shine and colour despite having one of the thinnest feather coats in the bird world. They never seem scared of humans either, which makes them fantastic photography subjects!
Date: January 2020
Location: London, UK
Camera Settings: ISO 800 – F/5.6 – 1/250.
I spied this Redwing while waiting for the bus back from Crystal Palace Park in South East London. It was the first winter I’d known about their migratory patterns and noticed their short stay in the UK – usually January to February in my local area – before heading south again in early spring.
Date: July 2019
Location: The Gower, Wales
Camera Settings: ISO 200 – F/6.3 – 1/200.
After a relatively fruitless spring hike along the Whiteford Sands walk on the Gower Peninsula, this chaffinch waited for us on the gate back to the carpark area. Walking with my dad, he told me that it used to be a hotspot for all kinds of birdlife, particularly waders, during the early 90s when we first moved to Wales.
The Casual Birder 