What A Year
This year started for me with a health problem and finished with a national health problem!!! Inbetween I was still able to take photos so now is the time to pick some of my favourites of the year.
A hunting Barn Owl, in winter sunlight, was a good start to the year only to be followed by lock-down! However, in May I was able to film Willow Tits which are now the most threatened woodland bird in Britain. A pair of Kingfishers followed and after hundreds of hours waiting I managed to capture on film the same hunting male Long Eared Owl as last year but this time with his ear tufts erected!
Autumn brought along two new birds for me in the form of Hoopoe and Wryneck. I found the colours and markings of the Wryneck amazing and this is my favourite bird photo of the year.The surprise of the year has to be the Otter with the Octopus and has to be a classic example of luck coming your way, if you put the time in!
Lets hope that we are able to return to Islay next summer, to continue work on Hen Harriers, and in the meantime Good Luck and Good Health to my readers in 2021. Click here
A sail through the Arctic pack-ice, at midnight in search of Polar Bears, is on many peoples bucket list. This weeks photo of a female Polar Bear, suckling her young, was only photographed by me, although there were fifty three other people on the boat with me. The reason is quite simple – it was lunch-time!
There is no doubt that Hawthorne berries are a favourite winter food source for Redwings. During the last week the light has been appalling but I managed to find a small number of Redwings feeding on haws on one of the busiest roads leading into Manchester. They were disturbed by passing traffic every minute or so but despite parking on a double yellow line I managed to obtain this weeks gallery photos.
In the last few weeks we have seen photos of the main species that make Islay such a great place for the wildlife enthusiast. This weeks gallery highlights Islays many other attractions that a visitor will see from Seals, Deer, Hares to Waders and of course the rarest member of the Crow family – the Chough. 
When you visit Islay in November and you have been more than one hundred times you do not expect to photograph a species that you have never filmed before. However, that is exactly what happened this November as I sat in my hide facing three Apple trees that had just shed their apples.Up to a dozen Blackbirds fed together and I waited in the hope of a Redwing or Fieldfare arriving but none appeared. Out of the blue a Blackcap appeared, then another and another until three males and two females were eating the apples! In summer Blackcap breed in the Islay woodlands but the Blackcap that I was filming were different, not in plumage, but where they had come from. It has recently been proved that the Blackcaps that we see in winter have come from Germany in contrast to the summer visitor Blackcaps who have now headed south to Africa. 