Hares & Badgers

Juvenile Badger - Cranborne Chase

It's obvious to me that if I want to make a success of this blog I have to update it regularly. Clearly once every two months, or even once in a blue moon, just won't cut it. So I'm really going to try from this point onwards to blog at the very least weekly, I think the ultimate of daily is just too much to achieve.

It's not that we're short of material as we have been busy this last two months, but not so busy that I have an excuse not to blog. I have a reason for this lapse, a damn good one too, but it's no good hiding behind excuses.

You'll maybe notice that this blog has morphed into Ian Locock Photography, rather than Ian Rose. This change is reflected across all of the locations where Rose and I share our work in an effort to avoid further confusion as to who actually took any given image. Rose now has a Facebook page 'Rosemary Locock Wildlife Photography' in addition to her Flickr account.

I've already blogged about our trip to the Gambia, but as far as processing images from that trip goes, there are still a good number to deal with. A few days after that blog post we revisited a private site we used last year for Brown Hares and in more promising weather. A pre-dawn start saw us installed in a hide waiting for the action to begin and we waited and we waited some more. There were hares about, but they were keeping out of range despite the hides having been in situ for long enough to be accepted as the norm.

After around three hours with not a frame being shot, the decision was taken to adjourn for coffee and a welcome stretching session, before moving to another part of the site. Surprisingly, although we were out in the open, this yielded the best shots of the day. There was some distant boxing action out of range of our 600mm lenses, but there were some close passes to capture instead. This turned out to be the high spot of the day and a second visit to that part of the site a while later was less productive. 

As the session was coming to an end, our guide for the day took us back to the cars via a different route, which we later learned was carefully planned. There is a Badger sett on the site and he knew there were two juveniles who habitually came out foraging during daylight. It wasn't long before we heard rustling in the long grass and there to our delight was the youngster featured in my shot. We enjoyed his company for a good ten minutes before we were joined by the second juvenile. As they moved closer, they were able to pick up on our scent and after around fifteen minutes in total decided it was time to return to the sett. 

It really was a magical encounter to be so close to these animals in broad daylight and was a beautiful end to the session. All in all, it was probably less successful than last year's visit and probably signals a need to seek out Brown Hares in a new location for future shoots.