Wildlife photography forces you to immerse yourself in nature

The wind is gentle off the Atlantic Ocean. The sun is working up to its vicious midday ultraviolet waiting to toast a vulnerable square centimetre of my exposed skin.

It’s calm. Birds are paying good attention to the feeder and one another, but not me. Tweets and gentle whooshes of lazy waves lapping are all the sounds on offer.

I am sat on my 50 pence piece of foam otherwise known as a ‘portable hiking seat’; it does nothing for the growing numbness in my buttocks. That might be the mild discomfort I am willing to accept to remove the past few weeks or city dwelling numbness in my head.

Binoculars in hand, time is passing out of focus and into a retrospective benchmark for what is, time well-spent.

It is within my peripheral vision that movement in hedgerow capture my attention. Soon after crunching of what can only be apples bring multiple senses together to hone in on my new companion.

Emerging through the longer grass she appears. At first tentative, her ears acutely sensitive to the faintest of clicks as I fire up the camera, but then she emerges through head down, pre-occupied.

A few feet away I can hear her breathing and munching. Her twitching slows and chewing accelerates as she grows in confidence moving further out of the longer grass and into full view.

Two big round eyes scanning the environment.

My bum is no longer sore - or so it seems. Holding the telephoto my arms should be aching, but everything seems increasingly calm.

She continues to nibble away, saving precious pennies on the next invoice from the gardener. The combination of grass with the sweet, sweet crunch of freshly dropped apples consuming all of her attention.

So consumed is she that she is merely a few feet away from me, undeterred by the increasingly sweaty human and several hundreds of flies occupying her torso.

For the briefest of moments her left ear twitches and we make eye contact for the first time. Her head is lifted for a handful of seconds, presumably as she eyeballs the weird dude in front of her looking through a camera.

I can only think she’s judging my hat, or choice of camera (why no Sony, bro?). Or she’s aware my backside is giving 15-hour flight sensations, or lack of. Whatever it is, she becomes gives off vibes of boredom quickly and resumes her lawn mowing.

A few moments later her twitchiness increases. Possibly the motors of distant boats or shouts from the occupants of said boats - noise travels far on water.

More head lifts and independent ear bends suggest she is starting to be spooked. Noise is danger when you in the middle of the food chain.

And then the jolt. She departs several hundred times faster than she arrived. Galloping into the long grass and through the hedgerow to what she hopes will be safer grazing grounds.

Spending time in nature is more often now prescribed as a means of supporting the health and wellbeing of everyone, whether you feel fit and healthy or having diagnosed conditions.

What felt like a couple of minutes turned out to be 45 full ones. Time moved at the same pace and it went unnoticed. No notifications, no schedule. Just absorbing the natural world as it did its thing in front of me - I just happened to be interested in capturing some of it visually.

You see, here’s the thing, whatever your perspective or condition, losing yourself in nature will improve you in ways a medical or electrical tablet won’t.

I lost myself for 45 minutes - if not longer if you include the nerdy birding I was doing before she arrived. It was time I didn’t know I needed to go unnoticed. It was time well-spent.

Thank you for making it this far, if you would like to connect on social media please hit the button below.

Follow me on Social Media

Subscribe to my Substack Newsletter

Nature Photography

Wildlife photography forces you to immerse yourself in nature

Observing as a Photographer