Samuel Hood Wildlife Photography

Samuel Hood Wildlife Photography Award winning wildlife photographer from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, North-east England.

Whilst visiting Islay earlier this month I caught up with a bird I’ve wanted to see for almost as long as I’ve been inte...
03/11/2021

Whilst visiting Islay earlier this month I caught up with a bird I’ve wanted to see for almost as long as I’ve been interested in birds. Chough have always held a very certain mystique for me, they live their lives in Britain quite literally on the edge. Their range in Britain is limited to a handful of Islands in the Inner Hebrides, the Northern Irish causeway coast, the Isle of Man, Wales and Cornwall. They live a peripheral life feeding on grazed clifftop swards and dune pastures, spending the summer months breeding on sequestered cliff ledges.

Between heavy showers I was treated to a chattering of over 40 Chough floating about above the dunes at Ardnave Point on the western shore of Loch Gruinart. The 40 strong group of birds effortlessly navigated the blustery conditions against a bucolic backdrop of cloud strewn mountains and wind clipped white caps harried on up the loch by strong Atlantic North-westerlies. Alighting on the grass to feed just in front of me provided some incredibly close views, a very special experience and one well worth waiting for!

Hopping rock to rock and buffeted by an onshore wind I enjoyed a wander up to Dunstanburgh Castle yesterday. Its castell...
02/11/2020

Hopping rock to rock and buffeted by an onshore wind I enjoyed a wander up to Dunstanburgh Castle yesterday. Its castellated and ruinous outline sat atop an outcrop of the great whinsill has to be one of Northumberland's most iconic scenes. I spent quite a bit of time watching and listening to the sea pounding against the rocks. Spindrift flicking back over the crests, white spume frothing between pebbles sat within rocky inlets, all to the soundtrack of a dynamic, shifting shoreline as rocks worn smooth by endless tides rattled as they rolled back into the sea as the waves ebbed away.

This isn't the best image of Dunstanburgh, nor is it new or particularly creative but I enjoyed taking it and really, I suppose that's what it's all about.

Neither the flashiest nor the rarest of birds to be found during an East coast Autumn however hearing the high-pitched c...
18/10/2020

Neither the flashiest nor the rarest of birds to be found during an East coast Autumn however hearing the high-pitched calls of Goldcrest as they proliferate and raid coastal hedgerows and thickets like this one I had the pleasure of watching on the coast last week, is still one of my favourite and most anticipated Autumn birding spectacles.

Whilst wandering around my inland patch earlier this afternoon I came across 2 Goldcrest hanging precariously from the branches of an Aspen made me stop and wonder where the birds I was watching had come from? Had they spent their entire lives in that stand of woodland living a parochial existence or were they continental explorers from afar?

When your first bird of the day is a Common Redstart flitting around at your feet you know it's likely to be a good day!...
05/10/2020

When your first bird of the day is a Common Redstart flitting around at your feet you know it's likely to be a good day!

3 consecutive days of outstanding birding this weekend resulting from strong easterly winds taking control from Friday evening onward. With millions of birds migrating through Europe, a favorable easterly tailwind acts like a conveyor belt pushing birds across the North Sea and in the process can occasionally produce stunning "falls" of birds as they literally fall from the sky onto the first patch of terra firma they encounter, ranging from entanglements of bramble, the tidal wrack of a sandy beach or at the feet of an expectant birder stood on a headland in the rain!

After coming across this Redstart on Lindisfarne yesterday I went on to see a stunning array of birds including most notably Red-flanked Bluetail, Red-breasted Flycatcher, Lesser Grey Shrike and upwards of 7 Yellow-browed Warblers. Alongside the rarities yesterday produced a fantastic host of commoner migrants including hundreds of Goldcrests, Robins and Redwing dripping from just about every haw clad thicket available. The spectacle of migration is simply stunning!

With Autumn here and Winter on its way I can start to resume one of my favourite pastimes, lying in piles of seaweed! It...
22/09/2020

With Autumn here and Winter on its way I can start to resume one of my favourite pastimes, lying in piles of seaweed! It probably isn't for everyone and is really just a rather pungent means to an end in order to get some nice low-level shots of waders perusing the tidal wrack for invertebrates.

This image rather distorts the actual size of Dunlin. Small but perfectly formed, Dunlin that winter on the U.K coast can travel thousands of miles from the eternal light of a Scandinavian summer or in equal measure could have made a short and leisurely flight from a summer spent in the uplands of Northern England or Scotland for a winter sojourn on the North-east coast. This bird carries a metal ring but unfortunately I can't get quite enough info from the ring for it to be of much use!

With little in the way of wildlife to photograph in grey, wet conditions whilst on holiday in the Peak District last wee...
31/08/2020

With little in the way of wildlife to photograph in grey, wet conditions whilst on holiday in the Peak District last week I decided to turn my hand to a spot of landscape photography, the first time in quite a long time it should be added!

I spent an evening around Mam Tor and the village of Edale one evening where, fortuitously the featureless grey skies relented and became far more interesting from a landscape photography point of view.

A slightly different subject matter away from the usual for me, a rather stunning Common Fragrant Orchid. Last week I vi...
12/07/2020

A slightly different subject matter away from the usual for me, a rather stunning Common Fragrant Orchid. Last week I visited a site that was completely new to myself. With quite restrained expectations, I left having fell completely in love with the place. Thousands of Orchids of various species; Common Spotted, Heath Spotted, Common Twayblade, Fragrant Orchid and Dark-red Helleborine strewn across a large area of Calcareous meadow. Dark-green Fritillary flitting over the gently swaying grasses in abundance whilst electric Common Blue butterflies danced over the yellow carpet of birds-foot trefoil and Kidney vetch. The luscious scent of the Fragrant Orchids hanging in the still air was really quite overpowering at times.

It is both quite amazing and quite sad to think that at one time many areas of the British countryside would have resembled this stunning scene, now reduced to scattered and so-often island like sites sat within sterile surrounds.

A trip down into County Durham yesterday proved worthwhile with excellent numbers of Northern Brown Argus butterfly on t...
25/06/2020

A trip down into County Durham yesterday proved worthwhile with excellent numbers of Northern Brown Argus butterfly on the wing. It's quite difficult to describe just how small these little Butterflies are, their wingspan is roughly the same as the width of a 50 pence piece! Areas of unimproved or lightly grazed limestone grassland with abundant common rock-rose are ideal for these little butterflies as they utilise rock-rose as their main egg laying and food plant. Easily missed but stunning up close!

I ventured down to the coast yesterday, the first time I've done so (aside for work purposes) in the last 3 months. Watc...
18/06/2020

I ventured down to the coast yesterday, the first time I've done so (aside for work purposes) in the last 3 months. Watching several Fulmars cruising along on their broad, stiff wings parallel to the ledge of the sandstone cliff face that runs between St.Mary's Island and Seaton Sluice was an utter joy. Inquisitive and observing, watching Fulmars can often feel like a reciprocal activity, the watching often seems to go both ways.

A Common Whitethroat belting out a song from the top of a willow tree just 5 minutes walk from home. Taken a couple of w...
11/06/2020

A Common Whitethroat belting out a song from the top of a willow tree just 5 minutes walk from home. Taken a couple of weeks ago.

It can be pretty easy to become blasé about the migration of a bird like Whitethroat, I've been guilty of it myself "Oh, yeah, they migrate from Africa" is a sentence I've banded about whilst talking about Warblers in the past. It's a pretty simple and easy way of explaining things. When you stop to actually consider that the bird you are watching has flown from the Sahel, over the Saharan Desert, through North Africa, into Europe and has then chosen the spot 5 minutes from your home to makes its nest, it does change the rather blasé attitude! It's quite incredible to think that a bird that weighs around 15 grams can overcome such seemingly insurmountable challenges to travel so far and through a range of extreme environments.

If conditions allow I love taking high key images and with the fairly dull weather yesterday I focused on trying to get ...
07/06/2020

If conditions allow I love taking high key images and with the fairly dull weather yesterday I focused on trying to get something slightly different to add to my portfolio of Swan images.

This cygnet was nestled into its mother's wing alongside its other siblings, the ever protective cob stood close-by on guard duty. They're doing well and before long will get to the "ugly cygnet" stage and start looking like washed out adults. Anyway they look pretty cute at this stage!

Address

Newcastle Upon Tyne

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Samuel Hood Wildlife Photography posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category