I had a nice photographic surprise this week.

My kids had told me they’d seen a fox in the street a few times, during the day. I’d not seen it at all. Then one night last week I heard some noises outside as I lay in bed around 3.30am. I looked out to see the fox had come up onto our porch & wa splaying with a paper bag full of tennis balls which had been left by the front door. It managed to get stuck in the bag & I watched it running around for a good ten minutes trying to get its leg out of the bag.

The following night I took ourpuppy for a walk around 2.30am & we saw the fox at the end of the street. We watched it for a few minutes, it stayed about 10 yards from us & wasn’t spooked in the slightest. It then followed us down the road. Every time we stopped, it stopped, and every time we started it followed.

The next 3 nights I took my camera with me on our early morning dog walk, but didn’t see the fox.

I was cooking tea the other evening when my wife told me the fox was on the grass bank outside the house. I went out & so it was, together with about 10 adults & kids all looking at it.

I grabbed the camera which already had the 100-400L fitted & took the following shots.

I was no more than 5 or 6 yards from the creature, which didn;t appear to be in the slightest bit othered with all the human interest & activity just a few yards from it.

Unfortunately, the light was very harsh which has resulted in some blown highlights in the chest fur especially on the first shot, but it was great to get my first ever shots of a fox.

I recently put the 600mm prime to use in the garden one night. It was a little experiment to see what the lens looked like with the 1.4 & the 2x converters.

The first shot was with the 2x converter on the lens. The second is with both converters stacked. The 1.4 converter keeps autofocus, but with moon shots I prefer to use manual focus anyway. With the 2x converter on the lens you lose autofocus anyway.

With the full-frame sensor the moon doesn’t appear as large in the frame as it would on a cropped sensor, but there is plenty of detail on these uncropped shots. I just have to try again with the moon in different phases to see how the shadows effect the detail on the surface of the moon.

Now that I have the 600mm prime I thought it was about time to get out there & use it on some wildlife.

Whilst reasonable confident with my gear, I have no real fieldcraft knowledge. I posted on the Talk Photography forums that I’d be interested in tagging along with any wildlife photographers in the area & was contacted by Keith, a bird photographer from Milton Keynes. He invited me up to his area for a shoot at Caldecotte Lakes.

We met in a car park beside the lake & set off for a walk round the lake. I had the 600mm on my trusty monopod, Keith had a Canon 100-400mm.

Keith is a regular to the lake & pointed out all the places where particular bird species could normally be found. Unfortunately, most of the usual birds must have been hiding that day.

We started off by trying to locate the local kingfisher in its normal habitat by staking out the branch it usually uses. It didn’t show. We then headed for an area rich with dogwood bushes to locate the bullfinches. They didn’t show either.

The grebes & swans were out in force. I must have seen a dozen or more great crested grebes, certainly more than I’ve seen anywhere else. Sadly, most of them were in the middle of the lake or in a reedbed miles from the nearest vantage point where even the 600mm wouldn’t pull them close enough. Though it was nice to see their famous mirror image courtship dance.

Keith thoughtfully brough along a bag of bread which he chucked into the air so I could get some in flight shots of the airborne gulls.

We then went round to a copse where the treecreepers hang out, only to find none hanging out. We walked round the rest of the lake stopping occasionally to shoot what was available. It probably took 3 hours for us to complete the circuit.

Finally, it was back to the car park where we chatted for a while. We did manage to get a green woodpecker join us & just as we were about to leave the kingfisher showed up. He then quickly disappeared, we waited with lenses akimbo for it to return but, true to the day’s form, he never did.

It would be great to pop back up there when the weather is a bit better & the birds haven’t gone on a day trip. My thanks to Keith (Hairy) from Talk Photography & I’m looking forward to my next visit in the spring.