An Hour at the Park

It was a bright and sunny day! We’ve had a bit of a heatwave recently and frankly I’ve been working hard to avoid the heat, staying in on beautiful looking days because I’m just not able to tolerate the hot weather like I used to. This particular day, though, was much cooler while still being clear and cloudless. Much more tolerable, you might say. With no rain on the horizon, I decided to get out to the local park to take some photos of birds.

I don’t visit Golden Acre Park very often. In recent years I feel like the nature reserve has functioned much more as a grant, membership and corporate sponsorship cash-cow for Yorkshire Wildlife Trust than as a nature reserve. In my opinion it’s been mis-managed, with poor decisions leading to a broad failure in purpose. Suffice it to say that there is less wildlife to discover today than two or three years ago, and all easily attributable to a lack of maintenance and cut-backs. In fact, the neglect there is so bad that the bird feeders have had to be removed to reduce the risk of pathogen spread that commonly happens when feeding areas are not adequately maintained. On this day it led to a very disappointing experience and one have no plans to repeat. I saw three species of bird, and all three would be present regardless of the presence of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. Of the two hides they built, one of them is now completely redundant owing to their water management mistakes and general neglect. The other is perhaps still worth a visit while it hasn’t collapsed and fallen into the dam.

The mis-managed nature reserve is fortunately just one part of Golden Acre Park, and there is a nice circular walk around a larger pond. At one spot on the edge of the pond is a nice hidden area where birds and squirrels visit. Not everyone knows about this little corner of the park but for those of us that do it’s quite a special spot. The local birds and the local squirrels to this spot have built a relationship with those that know, and they know that if a human wanders into this space there’s a good chance a peanut or a sunflower heart or two is likely to be on offer. And so they come.

Instead of using a long lens to photograph these animals and birds, in this location I usually use a 105mm macro lens, Unfortunately today I didn’t have my macro lens with me so I was left with the 18-55mm kit lens that I discovered at the bottom of my camera bag. Its maximum aperture is somewhat limiting, particularly compared to my macro’s f/2.8 and especially in a relatively dark location like this tucked away in the thicket, but the Nikon D5300’s ISO performance is good enough to compensate in the main and it was possible to shoot a reasonably high shutter speed. Provided the subjects didn’t move around too quickly, of course! There’s usually competition here between the woodland birds and the squirrels that hang around in the nearby trees, when food is on offer. I generally throw peanuts on the ground for the squirrels and on a tree stump for the birds. This works out quite well, and they mostly keep to their allotted feed.

Armed only with the 18-55mm, I decided to try photographing the squirrels at eye level. This is quite easy with the Nikon D5300 because of its articulating screen, though live view with Nikon DSLRs isn’t the easiest to work with. A low perspective, though, enabled me to create some space between the squirrel and the background, which was needed to create a little subject/background separation. The squirrels, seemingly knowing the game, remained quite unfazed and happily munched on the peanuts I provided while I stole some photos.