It sounds like an obvious thing to say, but most wildlife isn’t keen on loud noises. Go into a woodland with a marching band and your chances of seeing anything more than insects are pretty remote.<\/p>\n
So as a wildlife photographer, I’ve had to learn the art of sitting and walking quietly. It’s not an easy thing for a tubby 53-year old. I’ve learned that you have to walk very slowly – it can sometimes take me an hour to cover a hundred yards. I’ve learned that you need to have shoes which are comfortable, soft-soled and not made of leather (which has an unfortunate habit of creaking or squeaking at just the wrong moment. And I’ve learned to hate gravel paths and beech trees.<\/p>\n
Don’t get me wrong, I love Beech trees. They are my favourite tree – graceful, smooth-barked, with leaves that are an astonishing shade of green in the spring. But Beech trees produce nuts – Beech “masts” – in abundance, and these little dried-out pods little the ground and crack when you step on them. Walking near a Beech tree is like walking on a layer of bubblewrap or Rice Crispies. You have no chance at all of doing it quietly.<\/p>\n
It \u00a0was 8am and I was walking in the Savernake Forest, near Marlborough, Wiltshire when a movement caught my eye. It was a Roe Deer doe, a large female, and she was no more than 30 or so feet from me. Despite the fact that I was upwind, she seemed unsure of what I was. She hesitated. I did what I always do when I first spot wildlife – I stood completely still, and she gradually relaxed. I got a couple of shots off, although it was too dark in the shade of the trees for anything good. It’s just starting to be Roe Deer rutting season and I started to hope she might\u00a0lead me to\u00a0a herd nearby that I could photograph.<\/p>\n
She started moving towards\u00a0a small pool of light that was penetrating the trees, and I had to turn to follow her -but I had forgotten that I was standing under a Beech tree. I moved my foot slightly, and a sound like machine-gun fire or popping corn echoed around. The Deer startled, and bounded away. I never saw her again. Despite the fact that it cost me a picture of a species I enjoy being near, I can’t get cross about beech trees. They are the queens of the forest – tall, graceful and imperious. Beech nuts support a wife variety of birds and animals. The noise factor is a price I’m happy to pay. Usually.<\/p>\n
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It sounds like an obvious thing to say, but most wildlife isn’t keen on loud noises. Go into a woodland with a marching band and your chances of seeing anything more than insects are pretty remote. So as a wildlife photographer, I’ve had to learn the art of sitting and walking quietly. It’s not an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}