This weekend we had a day booked Alan McFadyens hide for "Mad Max" a wild Sparrowhawk which is quite unique in the fact that it comes in on a daily basis for free offerings put out by Alan, as well as making its own kills.

We made the 7 hour trip the night before and booked into a Premier Inn so we would all be fresh for the following mornings photography. We all got up early the next morning, texting each other to make sure no one had overslept. We set of for the meeting place with Alan who quickly introduced himself and led us the short drive and walk to his hide. Once in the hide Alan baited the perches (which are superb), with peanuts for Jays and hazelnuts for the Red squirrels and of course an offering for Max in the form of a mouse. Alan assured us that Max would turn up very soon even though it would still be to dark to take any photos, sure enough within about ten minutes Max was perched on a moss covered log about 10m away from us....a truly wonderful sight to witness. He stood there ripping the fur from the mouse before flying off with his prize.

The day was dark and dismal and the light really was not good especially for photography. It wasn't very long before the small woodland birds made an appearance and sometimes in large numbers, especially Chaffinches. We were getting brief appearances from Jays but with both of us taking shots the birds were spooked by the shutter noises. The two Nikon cameras I had both had quiet shutter release mode but the Canon didn't so it was a little pointless one of us using this feature (I never compare Canon to Nikon as I believe they are equally as good in the hands of the right user but I think in this instance it was a feature that may have helped our cause). The Jays would come and go but were very tricky due to lack of light, the fact that they always seemed to be partially hidden from view and the fact that Steve beat me to the shutter nearly every time which would spook them before I had even focused. Combined with the fact that  I kept previewing my images was were making it twice as hard as it should have been.

Red squirrels at this hide were also showing for the whole of the day, picking up hazel nuts and then running back up the hill to store them away in various places for the coming months. For anyone that has not been fortunate enough to see these in the wild they are nothing like the Greys we normally see in England. They are comical little animals constantly on the search for food and are very endearing making great subjects to photograph. Steve had them coming to the hide window to take food where they would be less than three feet from him, which in turn enabled him to take close up images with his mobile phone.

MAX arrives..... Hopes of seeing Max again were beginning to fade when just before 2.30pm I spotted him in a tree about 50metres away, we were all silent and perfectly still when he suddenly swooped in low and up on to the same perch we had seen him on earlier in the day, this time he had a coal tit to feed on (which had been found dead some weeks ago and kept in a freezer), he stayed with us for a few minutes plucking the bird and tearing at it before flying off with it. We had two further brief visits from Max during the day but the light was doing us no favours so not easy to get the shots we were after. We also had two very brief apearances from another Sparrow hawk but this bird did not stay on the perches long enough for any of us to capture a shot.

 Alan is very knowledgeable of his site and seems to knows this fabulous birds every habit even predicting fairly accurately the times we would be most likely to see him, he's a great guy and I would thoroughly recommend a visit to this site "you will not regret it!"

Follow this link

www.naturephotographyhides.co.uk