A bird watcher, after all.

After having been made redundant from my job of 18 years just before christmas, I decided to take the opportunity to do some travelling and indulge my growing passion for wildlife photography. Examples of my photographs can be seen at my website www.pjayphotos.com (where, rather excitingly, you can now actually order prints of my photographs should you so wish) and also on my photography blog at hawkseyeimages.com

When I was proudly showing one of my best friends the photos on my newly constructed website, he complained (rather unreasonably, in my opinion) that ‘most of the photos are of birds!’ As I know that he’d rather see images of greasy mechanical objects taken at motorbike and side car rallies, I dismissed his comment out of hand. It did, however, get me thinking….

These days, I am interested in wildlife and wild places in general and get equally passionate about trying to take a good photo of, say, a Pine Marten on the west coast of Scotland or a pod of Orcas in Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest of the USA as I do when trying to get a good image of a Booted Racket-tail hummingbird in Ecuador. So, why then ARE most of my photographs of birds? Well, I guess that in part this is a direct result of my coming from the UK.

A Pine Marten, with jam sandwich

In most parts of the UK, the countryside is so heavily cultivated and managed that, for most people, the only wild creatures that you are pretty much ever likely to see (and get a chance to photograph) are birds. When going out for a walk in the countryside you are not going to run the risk of bumping into a bear, for example. Photographic opportunities for good shots of elephants are also equally limited.

Not a typical scene in the English countryside

My childhood hobby of bird watching thus evolved into bird photography and, as my opportunities to travel abroad increased, wildlife and nature photography in general. This evolution has enabled me to handily avoid describing myself as a ‘bird watcher’ to the passing stranger who may see me equipped with binoculars and camera whilst ‘out in the field’.

Why do I have an inbuilt inclination to try to avoid describing myself as a bird watcher? Well, in the UK, describing someone as a ‘bird watcher’ is pretty much seen as a disparaging term, ranking you alongside the likes of ‘train spotters’ and ‘model train enthusiasts’. In most people’s minds, the term ‘bird watcher’ brings up an image of a sad, socially maladjusted, lone male figure wandering the countryside muttering to themselves as they peer into hedgerows. In an attempt to avoid this stereotype many bird watchers, when confronted, will refer to themselves as a ‘birder’ instead. This preferred term of ‘birding’ somehow suggests a ‘cooler’ image, implying that they are spending their free time doing something altogether more professional, active and exciting than merely ‘bird watching’. Unfortunately, I don’t think that the term ‘birder’ or ‘birding’ is ever really used by anyone other than bird watchers themselves, which kind of defeats the point.

So, I guess I just have to try and come to terms with all of this and face the facts. Yes, most of my photographs are of birds. That’s because I like watching birds and trying to take photographs of them. OK, here I go. Deep breath. ‘Hello, my name is Phil and I’m a bird watcher’. Phew, that feels better….

A bird, obviously.