Hide

My first session in the hide was a great success, in terms of bird activity. A few nice shots of tits, like this Great Tit, but I quickly realised that I had two problems. I was too close to frame a shot of a larger birds with a 300mm lens (which is effectively 450mm on my Digital SLR). Also, the three natural-looking perchs I had setup simply offered the birds too many choices!

The layout of my garden meant I could not move the hide back, so I decided that for my next session I would use the 70-200mm zoom with 1.4x teleconvertor, effectively a ~150mm-400mm range, which should give me sufficient range for all sizes of birds I had encountered so far. I also had the option of using the D2x's High Speed Crop mode to take this out to almost 600mm.

I removed all but one of the perchs I had created, and pruned a few branches from the tree. I also set about created a natural-looking perch for the woodpeckers. I took a log (80cm by 15cm) with good bark, and fixed this to a plant frame, which was carefully positioned and then pushed into the lawn. I drilled some holes in the side and pushed in some peanuts, and finally brushed the sawdust away with some water and a soft brush.