Devon is one of the few counties where you can see Cirl buntings and today i met up with Ian White to photograph them. Strangely although Ian lives in Bristol he had knowledge of a better location than i did so we arranged to meet at the site at 9.00am.

Shortly after setting up a few perches we settled in front of our cameras and waited as the birds began to come out of the hedges gradually gaining confidence as time passed. The weather was almost perfect with good light and the strong winter sun was filtered through the trees so not causing too many exposure problems. Good numbers of males and females came in although nearly all of them dropped from the blackthorn bushes straight onto the floor to feed so photo opportunities were few and far between for quite some time After about five hours the birds seemed to occasionally settle on some of our perches so we gradually managed to get some reasonably decent images, fortunately not a minute too soon as my legs are now 53 years old and I was starting to cease up after sitting on the floor for so long.

Cirl bunting (female)S.Devon