Marston Moretaine — Life in the Hedges

Every day people stroll, run or cycle along roads with rarely a glance to the right or left, often in worlds of their own, with scant regard for the small creatures that abound in the hedges, along the low walls, or in the grass alongside the pavements. Yes, many will admire some of the brightly coloured flowers, or the neatly trimmed lawns, but when cars or bikes are passing, there are often sounds to be heard; obviously birdsong, but at lower levels there can be the gentle hum of bees. Even without those sounds, there is activity a-plenty.

I had spotted the bees, as I walked to the Post Office and back, so I broke off from what I had planned and took out a camera and over two short sorties with two different lenses set out to capture what was there in just a short stretch of the main road.

There were bees, tiny moths, a ladybird, spiders, one minuscule pale insect I had never seen, hoverflies — some were too agile and shy for me to capture.   We rely on many yet give them barely a passing thought but, when you look closer at some, you would see that many of these creatures have bodies of incredible complexity, and possess skills we can only dream of possessing. I can highly recommend stopping by a hedgerow in the early evening of a warm summer day when you see a hoverfly, and just watch their flying skills, as they lift off from a leaf perform darting swoops, the stop, hover a moment, often swing through ninety degrees at the same spot, then climb vertically, and stop again. I have found that in areas of mixed light and shade, they will often hover in the sunlit spot, then get mobbed by other hoverflies who then take over the same point in space.

On this occasion it was too early for that behaviour, and one hoverfly simply relaxed, preened itself with its long legs, then poohed! The tiny moth I spotted was barely two millimetres in diameter, and way too energetic for me to capture. And the ladybird simply burrowed deeper in the hedge, and never reappeared. Gerald Durrell, author of ‘My Family and Other Animals’ had far more exotic ‘mini-beasts’ on Corfu, but English hedgerows are far from bereft of tiny insects that are interesting to study. I would highly recommend some words from WH Davies — ‘What is this Life, if full of Care, we ne’er have Time to Stop and Stare’. A day or so back I took some shots of water boatmen — these are tiny creatures that can be found on streams and lakes, who can walk on water, and they skip along the surface with incredible agility.

When I photograph flowers, I very often try to capture insects that either pollinate those flowers or search for smaller prey who feed therein. There is a world of life within a hedge, and I gain much personal satisfaction in taking photos of this world; it is endlessly fascinating, and highly therapeutic.

Late Autumn at Woburn Park

The warm sunshine at this time of year is very tempting, as soon this warm spell will  give way to high winds and rain and we will be seeing the portents of Winter, so it is not a difficult decision to make and grab camera gear and head off out — on this occasion to head over to Woburn and the Deer Park. Since I had the Benbo with the 7D Mk II, I was hoping the Staff might let me have some grace over parking, and I was offered an hour’s grace.
            The only disappointment was the deer had had very different plans and did not oblige with a trip to the pond at the entrance, so when my time was up, I drove back to the Car Park, where I chose to pick up the 150-400mm, which I knew I could use handheld, I also had the 24-70mm with its macro option, and now, whereas the 7D MkII was the body which gave me the 1.4 times advantage on the longer lens, I was now using the 5D Mk III so the throw was far less.

My knees at present are weak, so there was no way I was trudging through the woods with a heavy tripod, and I even forsook the monopod in favour of setting higher ISOs on the full frame body, which did give me the option of having more than the long lens in the camera bag.

On my return to the pond I spotted a black swan on the lake near the entrance gate. I did capture some of one’s display of its very striking white wing feathers. What I found rather surprising was how tolerant were the normal white swans were, even when at close quarters. I have often found swans to be quite aggressive towards other birds on the water.

At the pond by the Entrance kiosks there were a pair of Egyptian Geese. This pair were quietly munching at the grass, the female resting rather more than the male, only following when he had moved several goose-lengths distant — not exactly the most energetic of birds!

Upon my second arrival at the pond by the entrance kiosks, The deer had come closer to the pond and soon came to the edge and stepping tentatively into the shallow water. It was almost as if one deer had to go first before others followed.

            I stayed awhile taking shots before the fairly long walk through the woods where I took a few more pictures of some of the leaves and berries that heralded the beginning of the autumn season, and from the profusion of berries, I did wonder whether this year’s Winter was to be harsher than last’s. This afternoon had been very warm, but with a cloudless sky, the evening cooled swiftly and the night was a lot colder.

Sunshine on the First of September

Initially, I checked on whether there was any wind on the Lake at Brogborough – there wasn’t, so on I travelled towards Newton Blossomville, and the nearby river, in case there was a spot conducive to finding the likely environs for kingfishers; upon investigation, that seemed unlikely, but where I had parked my car, I had noticed a digger at work, and after taking a few landscape shots of the river, I was sufficiently intrigued as to what might be happening, so I took just my 24-70mm on the 5D MkIII and walked to where the man and his digger were pulling away the bushes at the top edge of the field.

I surmised he might be trying to increase the area to be cultivated, but I was wrong. I had noticed wire fencing to keep rabbits out, and I learned that the work was to cut down on their habitat, as they were causing havoc, and this work was to clear the overgrown hedgerows to a degree to protect the farmers’ crops. As I approached the digger, the driver stopped work, and I learned he remembered me from an earlier trip to this area when they had been working in the fields with a large Claas Combine Harvester. We chatted awhile, and not having a card I wrote the blog address down for him, so that he could see those shots he remembered me taking.

On returning to my car I realised I actually had a print there so, rather than walk back, I drove closer to where he was working and showed him the shot I had taken, and he said he had seen it as when I left to go the car, he had looked on his phone and found them! He was more impressed when he saw the A4 print of the headline picture!

He was not able to give me any hints as to where I might find some kingfishers, but mentioned he had been fishing one time when on landed on his rod to keep his eye on any likely meals. I returned to the car and continued to Harrold-Odell Park where I did manage to get some shots of a couple of herons, one in-flight as he reacted to my presence.

I walked all around the lake after meeting a family lakeside, and the father began chatting, as he owned a Canon 5D, and he suggested I walk along the river as he felt it was far more appealing. On this occasion I found there was very little activity on the river compared to admittedly a larger though fairly mundane bird population on the lakes. That said I did see the two herons, and a grebe amongst the numerous swans.

The walk certainly exercised me, as I now do ache somewhat as I was not using my lightest tripod, and the Sigma 150-600mm Sports lens can never be described as lightweight, and I still also had the 5D MkIII with the 24-70mm slung around my neck!

Station Road Front Garden Flowers

Marston Moretaine’s Station Road has many front gardens that are displaying a wide variety of floral colours and on a visit to the Co-op and Post Office, it was very noticeable how the bees were taking it easily in the heat, in particular, the bumble bees, they would often stretch out a limb to the next nearmost flower, and then simply stroll across rather than fly, thus expending far less energy and presumably keeping cooler, the lighter honeybees did this less often again this was possibly because conserving energy was less of an issue for these lighter-framed, lissom bees.

I decided that rather than stay indoors and consume litres of liquids to keep cool, well-hydrated to remain compos mentis, it would be better to grab the camera and try to capture these pollinators at work; little did I realise that the the strain of holding the camera steady and trying to follow these hard working fellows would in fact mean I would sweat profusely and find my eyes stinging and have to keep mopping my face to keep my specs clean, I persevered and captured some reasonable images that told these insects’ story and gave me a few more images for card ideas. At the time I had no idea that two of these images would be put to this purpose so soon – I returned home to learn from my ex-wife that a friend of ours had just been admitted to hospital to have a bowel tumour removed, so I created a card hoping that she might bee(image of!) soon well again. How dull life would be without some healthy paronomasia! – A game I frequently play with my younger daughter.

In a very short time I had the makings of yet another gallery of images for the blog and for future card ideas – on this occasion I was using the 5D MkIII and the 24-70mm lens with the handy macro facility, although the combination worked reasonably well, a better choice might just have been the dedicated 100mm macro due its wider aperture and continuous focussing range, where with the 24 to 70mm I was just on the cusp of needing to switch between 70mm and the macro range, it was a marginal difference between them on this occasion.

I then had to return to the furnace that is a house which is well-insulated and, without a murmur of wind made a passable thermos flask, in which to process the images into a gallery.