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The easiest subjects were the game birds forging for food along the road edges. Pheasants being the most common.

Next a Red-legged partridge

The less common Grey Partridges were more trickier to get close to but I finally found a pair that were happy for me to pull my car up to.

I also found a small flock of skylark’s.

Without any cover the local Brown Hare’s were easily visable but often spent the day in the middle of the fields.

If you have seen my previous hare blogs from last year you will know the many hours I spent waiting to see the hare’s boxing. Over the course of the last week I have seen so much boxing. Although most has been at quite a distance the following sequence which is a large crop from the original image shows some classic boxing behaviour.

When I did get some closer action I had some harsh backlighting to contain with, but by converting the image to black and white actually enhances it.

Eventually I did get close to one individual that I first found snuggled up in it’s form.

All I had to do was wait and I finally got some full frame images of this hare in the snow. An added bonus was some beautiful late evening light.

Like the hare’s my other favourite subject the roe deer was often visable but always very wary of my car. Again my perseverance paid off.

And finally when all else failed I spent some time photographing the local pigs.

Many of you may well disagree but I hopeing for some more of the white stuff before this winter is finished.

Merry Christmas to all who view my website and a Happy photographic New Year.

Sometimes it would land on a very unnatural perch.

By spending time on this subject I was also able to photograph it as it flew and hunted from it’s various perches.

One piece of behaviour that I captured that was facinating to watch was it coughing up a pellet from its mouth.

And finally anything sihouetted against a red sky is always nice but to have such a rare bird is definately a bonus.

By using various pieces of wood, stone etc to build a small set up,which I lite with a pair of studio lights we were able to photograph the creatures in a semi natural environment and my clients are able to improve their macro photography skills with the usually complient subjects.

Below are some of my images from the evening. First up a Bearded Dragon.

Moving on to a pair of snakes, firstly the Boa Constrictor.

One of the great things working with such accessible subjects is we could get really close up and below is a close up of the snakes body.

The other snake we photographed was a Royal Python.

With this snake we also had the photo opportunity of it swimming.

Now we move on to a Chameleon.

When you are close to these it’s amazing to watch their eyes.

Next a Horned Frog

It’s not just four legged creatures we had on show, we had cricket’s, scorpions and this Red kneed Tarantula.

The centre also has lots of aquariums housing all sorts of tropical fish and other creatures such as this Shrimp.

Also if you ever wondered what happened to him after his Hollywood career was over Nemo is safe and sound and swimming around a tank in Norfolk !!!!!

I would very much like to thank Swallow Aquatics of East Harling and especially Dillon and John for making our evening such a fantastic one. Your passion and enthusiasm for the creatures you look after really comes across and from my clients messages they all want another evening soon. Cheers guys.

Also a big thank you to Jo, Viv , Kev and Les for your support and booking the evening before I had even advertised it.

And what I haven’t mention yet is these evenings are not only great for photography but we had the privilege (for those that wished) to hold some of the subjects we had photographed. This final image shows my friends Jo and Viv with there new best mate.

If you are interested in this workshop I will be organising some more for 2012. The evenings run from 6 to 9pm and cost £25 per person and limited to 4 photographers only. Non photographic guests are welcome at a cost of £10 per person.

Here is a selection of my favourite images taken at the centre this year.

As you will see with the static set ups it is able to get stunning images be it of the whole bird or a close up of the head of such beautiful birds.

The flying displays offer a whole new challenge with birds varying in size and speed so really sharpening the skills of the photographer.

I would like to thank all the staff and volunteers at Stonham Barn’s but especially Andy (The Boss) for allowing me to organise these days. Also I’d like to thank Dean and Matt for there patience and knowledge who were our falconers on the days. I know all of my clients and myself really enjoyed the days and you opened our eyes to all what you do at the centre with not only caring for the birds but all the work building or maintaining avaries and the sleepness nights raising the young chicks. Cheers all.

I have booked a couple of dates at the centre  for 2012 these are Saturday 17th and Sunday 25th of March and are priced at £50 for the day. If you are interested in booking one of these dates please get in contact.

As the wheat grow I found the deer would spend more time in the field and would be intrigued by this black shape (my car) that would slowly pull up on the side of the road.

The red in the above photo will tell you that I had found not only an amazing subject but the setting had such potential I just kept going back as much as I could during the few weeks that the poppies were in flower. Capturing many different shots of the deer.

Now I did mention a family and on several evenings I had the privilege of seeing a couple of small heads pop up amongst the poppies.

As you can see Mum was never too far away. But also surprisingly I thought neither was Dad.

As the crop started to turn colour the young deer would blend in to their surroundings.

However the deer’s landscape was about to change dramatically, but with the lack of cover I was still able to photograph the family.

Again though Mum was around if needed.

These are just a few images from what was a magic few weeks and to have seen this family at close range let alone been able to photograph them was very special.

This run was not the only one the hare’s had and often they would appear further down the road from another one. However on a few occasions my patience payed off with a hare coming down the run. Often it was the young first year leveret than seemed not to care with the 10 frames a second being fired as it ran towards me.

Normally this youngster would have feed on its way to the roadside.

On several occasions this particular young hare would just keep coming nearer and nearer to me sat in the car allowing me to get some very close full frame portraits.

Sometimes though I just got the feeling that this youngster didn’t want its photo taken !!!

I hope you have enjoyed my three hare blog posts and for me shows what images are possible with going back to the same place time and time again, oh and some patience does help.

Then all of a sudden a chase would begin.

If you ever thought that hare’s boxing was something that the Queensbury rules would allow then this next set off images will show that this particular confrontation was more suited to the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship)  octagon than the boxing ring. Here the male (starting on the right) launches himself straight at the female’s body.

The above images all took place within ten seconds and in all over my many hours of watching hare’s I only saw about twenty seconds of boxing so am happy to have photographed this sequence. To finish off this post this final shot was taken within the same minute as the fight above but shows the female (left) has finally been able to defend herself and this what we perceive as the classic boxing hare’s image.