Nick Bartrum

WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY

The Fenland Wanderer

Search

Getting Closer to Nature (photography hides)

Mar 3, 2019

Getting Closer to Nature (photography hides)

White tailed eagle, taken from a photography hide in Hortobagy, Hungary. Wildlife photography hides can be brilliant fun. The best ones get the photographer up close to shy, illusive or rare animals and birds and they often provide unique perspectives on rarely witnessed behaviour. For those of us for whom time is limited, they provide an exciting and relatively easy way to fulfil our desire of attaining the perfect shot. The hard work has already been done which often means

Let Sleeping Hawks Lie

Aug 24, 2018

Let Sleeping Hawks Lie

A Sparrowhawk embodies a wildness otherwise absent from the English landscape. To see one is to witness a defiant last stand of the wild in our diminished (and overmanaged) countryside. When a hawk speeds low across the field, over the hedge and into the garden (or through a woodland glade) it splinters the air, creating a super-charged frisson, sending other birds into a panic stricken phrenzy. They are much misunderstood and maligned as being the peril of songbirds, and are

A Mural of Buntings

Mar 3, 2018

A Mural of Buntings

The sound of a snowbound Norfolk is a refreshing change, the persistent hum of human activity is replaced by an audible softness. The blanketed earth absorbs noise, leaving only the wind and the creaking rustle of the trees and hedgerows to disturb the stillness. The light is changed too, the snow reflects, brightening even the greyest day. I am following a mural of buntings (the delightful collective noun for buntings), reed buntings to be precise. They have discovered a lif

The Pale Ghost of the Fen

Oct 24, 2017

The Pale Ghost of the Fen

I hope I’ve chosen the perfect spot, close to cover, out of sight and quiet, with a panoramic views across middle fen, in a favourite barn owl hunting area. Camera ready. Now it’s a case of patiently waiting and hoping that the owls choose to come out tonight. After an hour, and with fading light, I begin to feel that luck is not on my side this evening, an ominous bank of cloud looms over the sunset threatening to deaden the light. The barn owl appears so suddenly I think I’