After finding a Buzzard feeding on the pheasants on the trail cam I was excited to see if I could get some shots with the camera.
I had one lady in the hides in the day but she left early so by 3 pm I was in the hide ready for a stakeout.
The day before in anticipation I made some drop-down curtains to make the camera more inconspicuous on the shelf and the hide has 1-way glass at the top already, perfect for seeing what’s going on.
The hide was built to try and get Buzzards in the first place a couple of years ago but never worked until now, and now doubles up as Tawny owl hide and Badger hide.
Anyhow back to the photography, the mound is a series of logs stacked in a line 4 feet high covered in woodchip and on which I placed the Buzzards, one tethered just in case a fox tried to scarper with it.
The camera was my Nikon Z6 in silent shutter mode ( wouldn’t dare use my D5 for shutter noise) coupled with my 300 ml 2.8 lens.
The light was very variable from full sun, to overcast with a few flakes of snow throughout the afternoon, so main shutter speeds of 500 – 1000 at 7.1, iso floating.
The bird circled a few times then came and landed in a pine just to the left of food and sat there for 30 mins, then landed over to the right on another perch, clearly checking out the situation.
The camera was set on the pheasants with plenty of space to crop into and locked tight as I do not dare move anything whilst the bird was in front of me.
After another what seemed like ages it dropped down onto the platform and just looked around very nervously, I’ve read you shouldn’t fire before they start to feed but using silent shutter couldn’t resist, the bird stayed and kept looking around.
I managed a few shots and it moved positions a couple of times then flew off, pretty sure it wasn’t down to me but seemed a bit agitated.
So now the plan is now to keep the food going out and keep checking the trail cam for activity and I think will be at first light and after I’ve gone in the afternoon.
I can then stake out these times, fingers crossed away.
Here’s what I got, thanks for looking, and please leave a comment at the bottom of the page.
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