Welcome

Welcome to my galleries of mainly birds

I started taking photos a few years after starting to watch birds and other wildlife when I retired. I have recently moved into Canon's RF cameras/lenses. I now use the R5, R6 and R7 cameras and the 600mm f11, 800mm f11 and 24-105mm f4-7.1. Both large lenses are very sharp and the fixed aperture is not proving to be a problem for me as both cameras can take good photos using very high ISO's. It is such a pleasure using such light equipment. I have recently purchased the RF100-500mm f4.5-7.1 zoom lens which is getting a lot of use.
I recently sold my Canon EF400mm f4 DO IS mark 2 lens as it wasn't getting used and I bought the Canon RF 70-200mm F4 L lens to supplement my other lenses

In early 2017 and 2018 we had good holidays in The Gambia with the usual great photo opportunities.

Our next trip was on a mammal / bird safari to the Okavango Delta in Botswana with Naturetrek. Absolutely excellent with wonderful photographic opportunities providing a Botswana gallery showing a few of the photos I took.

We spent the first two weeks of December 2018 back in The Gambia. The bird life was somewhat less than expected. More in the News section.

In March 2019 we spent 2 weeks visiting Zambia, Botswana and Namibia (mostly in Namibia) with Naturetrek. The bird life offered good opportunities for photographs but we failed to find both the Secretary Bird (which we really wanted to photograph) and Pel's Fishing Owl but we did photograph this bird in Botswana last year.
More details in the News section.

In November 2019 we had a great trip with Naturetrek to the Masai Mara in Kenya. We stayed 2 nights at the lodge that was owned by Joy Adamson (of 'Born Free' and the lion Elsa fame) followed by 5 nights in the Masai Mara staying in luxury tents (very comfortable). The photographic opportunities for both birds and mammals were excellent. We did find the Secretarybird and were able to photograph this iconic bird on 3 separate occasions.

2022: We spent a week in September back in Botswana. Not as good as our previous visit in 2018 but still photographed some exciting animals. In Nov/Dec we, again, visited The Gambia (our 7th. visit). Birds were scarcer and some places we visited will need a lot of work to bring them back to pre-covid standards.

A further visit to The Gambia in March/April 2023 proved to be really good and some better than usual photos were obtained. See the gallery for some example

Enjoyed a recent trip (Nov. 2023) to South Africa on a bird safari. Some photos shown in the S.Africa and Kruger gallery,