20 - Keep it local

In our line of work, we have ventured over a lot of the United Kingdom and parts of Africa. We really enjoy going and experiencing new places and wildlife to photograph. The thing about new places is they can be more than a little bit frightening. You don’t know what you have let yourself in for. Is all the time and money you’ve spent going to be worth it?

Of course most of the time going somewhere new is worth the effort, but it is impossible to keep going to new places. So we have a fall back. We have a series of places that are very local to us that we visit on a regular basis. These are our banker places to take photographs, somewhere we are going to get pictures.

We’ve had a lot of comments about close by locations that you can visit regularly. It seems that they seem to be the last on the list for photographers to visit and take photographs. Well we hope that in this podcast we can help change your mind. Local can be just as rewarding as traveling hundreds of miles to not get a sighting or photograph.

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Transcript

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Welcome. You're listening to Mark and Jacky's Wildlife and Photography podcast. Explore and learn about the natural world and how to take pictures. This podcast is all about photography. Our aim is to help you improve your pictures. It doesn't matter what camera you use. We want to stimulate your creative side, get you taking pictures that you want to share with other people. Episode 20. Keep it local. How would you like to learn a simple, inexpensive way of watching nature or taking photographs? If the answer is yes, we may have the solution for you. If you're not that bothered, oh well try and find another podcast. This is not going to save you money. The secret to visiting places to take pictures or just to watch nature is don't go anywhere. Yeah, that's right. Keep it local to stay close to home. I know it sounds very boring, doesn't it? But it needn't be. All you have to do is to take the right approach. I’ll grant you it’s possibly not going to be as exciting as some we knew might be. After all, who doesn't want to venture into the unknown. To seek out new picture opportunities. Explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life, a new civilization, and to boldly go where no one has gone before. All right, that's called out my system. Now for the interesting bit. New places you've never visited before. Is it a different level to keeping it local, especially when your destination has a reputation for the spectacular. The first time we went to Kenya together, we planned the trip for about a year before finally boarding the plane, a three week safari in the Maasai Mara. Jackie was a bit more laid back. She had visited before, but for me it was my first time. I was like a kid waiting for Christmas. It turned out to be an amazing trip. Memorable wildlife encounters, bringing back some amazing pictures. One thing about the new is it can be overwhelming at first. You feel like you're on a merry go round. Everything is a constant blur. It wasn't until perhaps the third week when I started to appreciate our surroundings, catching small glimpses into what the Mara was all about. It took me that long to get over the it’s an elephant moments. As the novelty wears off. Or maybe I should say down. You start to notice the countryside and its wildlife. It's a small things like interaction between herd members taking time to study the interactions. You get to notice the tiny flowers that appeared as if from nowhere. The plants had always been there, but I just failed to notice them. The place is becoming local. We don't live in them, Mara, but we have nature and wildlife nearby. We visited a lot more regularly than the Maasai Mara. Our patch has a diverse and exciting range of wildlife. It's not the same wildlife as the Mara. Now, maybe you are lucky and have a herd of elephants on your doorstep. For us locally, we're unlikely to photograph an elephant. Mammoths did roam the Highlands at the end of the last ice age, but not since. So keeping it local has advantages and disadvantages. Local can be just as fantastic as the savannahs of Africa. You just need to readjust your scale. We're going to try and persuade you. Watching and photographing the natural world close to home is a good thing. We accept that it's going to be a challenge because who, in all honesty, doesn't like new and exciting places? Given half a chance, I'd be off somewhere exotic camera in hand in a heartbeat. But those sort of opportunities only come at considerable cost. Therefore, the number of times we can go is limited. Local has lots of advantages. It's there. We are going to explore in this podcast. By the end you'll be at the door ready to keep it local. So please make sure that your seat and tray are in the upright position and that your seat belt is securely fastened. First thing, get to know your local patch. Everybody has some nature or wildlife on or very near their front door. Now full disclosure, we're lucky we live in Scotland. It has some of the most diverse landscapes in the whole of the UK. That's something we should be bragging about because the UK has one of the most depleted environments in the world. Hopefully where you live is one of the 189 countries that managed to do better than the UK. And your local patch will be full of wildlife and nature, all just waiting for you to discover. Different habitats create homes for different species. You need to think about how many different habitats are local to you. We have mountains, wood, wooded rivers, drafts, fresh water, sea lochs, all within 30 miles of home. The sheer variety of habitats provides a home to enormous numbers of species. Scotland has upwards of 6000 known species that call it home. The law of averages says we must have at least 1000 species on our doorstep. When you think about it, we can probably only identify about 100 to 200 at the most. Only 10% or less of what is living on our doorstep. If you're not living in Scotland, you may not be quite so lucky. But at a guess, I reckon most people will have a few hundred species, if not the thousands, on their doorstep. It's just a case of visiting different habitats and looking about. Do you live in an urban area? I'll bet you thinking I don't have any nature around me. Well, think again. Look around you with a bit of looking. You should be able to find plants and animals that make their home, in our urban world. Nature is not going to let those rich pickings. Even the most seemingly inhospitable places not have a colony or two exploiters. You may think, it's impossible for anything to do with nature to live in your local patch. Our cities and urban spaces are now so large, and numerous, they are squeezing our wild lands and the animals into smaller and smaller areas. This has meant that many of what we classed as wildlife has now moved into our cities to share our lives. Many of our cities now have a resident population of top predators who have moved in to take advantage of the things we throw away every day. The skies above your head may host birds of prey hunting pigeons. Those pigeons are so numerous because they feed on scraps of burger and chips. We discard by the ton every day in our urban areas. Venture out after dark. Remembering to be careful of the human predators that stalk the night. You’ll find that the turning of the day and night shift is just starting. Animals that roam the streets by day arresting a new ecosystem is starting its shift in the city that doesn't sleep. The vantage of a local patch is that it's close enough. You can visit every day rather than just once a year or every few years. It's a big advantage. Walking and cycling to your local patch is helping towards reversing climate change. Walk and you have almost a zero carbon footprint. If you must use some form of motorized transport, at least your journey is going to be short. It can't be said often enough. Being familiar with a habitat gives you a tremendous advantages over somewhere new. Visit regularly and you build your knowledge about what and where you see things. You grow familiar with your environment. Familiar is helpful. It allows you to spot changes a lot quicker than if it's all new to you. As a species, we're not great at detecting changes in our environment. It even has a scientific name“Change Blindness”. Why is this? Have you ever seen one of those puzzles where you have two pictures or drawings to look at? You try and spot the difference between the pictures or perhaps another type of puzzle, where you spot the penguin wearing the crown and a colony of penguins. You find a lot of these examples out there on the Internet. Go and try a few. You will see that as a species, we're not great at spotting the difference. That's because although we dedicate about a third of our brains to vision, even this huge amount of processing power, we can't and don't see an inverted commas, everything. What do you think you see you don't. You make it up as you go along. We see very little. Something you learn very quickly as a photographer. What people think they see is not actually what they see. If you see what I mean, I think. Visual information from your eyes passes to your brain via the optic nerve. It arrives at the visual cortex and a specialist vision processing center located at the rear of your brain. In the visual cortex, specialist neurons called feature detector neurons. These look for things like angles, shapes, edges or movements. Each detect a neuron performing a specialist function. If you have a blue square in your field of vision, it will be processed by parallel horizontal and vertical neuron line detectors. Blue color feature neuron detectors will also fire because all these neurons have fired. The information is noted pass to another part of your visual cortex. Here, more specialist neurons compare what neurons have fired, and for the want of a better analogy, they compare the firing sequence to a set of known patterns. It's a bit like a database of shapes you already know and have experienced before a burst of neuron activity. And you know you're looking at a blue square, not because you looked at it carefully. No, because it looks enough like all the other blue squares you have ever seen. When you look at a scene, you're probably only actually seeing any detail in a few percent of the whole. The rest is an illusion, a deception your brain has concocted. The reason for this is very simple. Without your brain making things up, you wouldn't be able to move about at any speed. The amount of brainpower needed to process everything in your vision without this system would take hours to process. One step would be an immense effort and take minutes before your brain could declare it safe to move forward. Your brain would have to look at everything in your vision and identify it label and fix it in 3D space and move to the next object. Some of these feature detectors are turned to respond to particularly important objects, faces, smiles and other parts of the human body. Your visual cortex has learned a vast amount about your fellow humans and the environment we all occupy to speed vision processing up. You also continue to train your feature detectors throughout your life. This is where going somewhere frequently comes into play. The more you absorb the look of an environment, the more your feature detectors learn how to recognize the unfamiliar. This is one of the reasons why local guides can spot a game in the Mara at a great distance. Their feature detectors have been trained by a living in the environment. Their ability to spot what is different very quickly makes them expert at finding game. Their brains ignore the landscape and seeing clearly the animals present. You look out to the horizon and all you see an unfamiliar landscape. Familiarity training works with most of our senses. When something is different or unusual, we notice it straight away. It's a matter of training. How much different it needs to be before we react is in part due to the familiarity and long term exposure. After all, it's how our ancestors avoided getting eaten on the plains of Africa. Visit your local patch often enough. It builds your visual and other detectors? Being attuned with the environment helps you spot new things as well as getting to know your patch physically. Try and read up about what you expect to see. Good to know the flora and fauna you can encounter while on your patch. Get to know the seasonal changes. We have a temperate climate in the UK with four distinct seasons. Autumn is season of change deciduous trees, lose their leaves and the onset of the colder weather. Time for summer visitors to find warmer places to spend the winter one with a plentiful supply of food further south. At this time of year, the winter migrants start to arrive from the colder northern lands. If you're a bird watcher or a bird photographer, get to know what species birds are likely to be seen. A good example is the Red Wings, a small thrush, a visit to the UK in winter. It spends the summer breeding in Iceland and Scandinavia because it feeds on insects and berries. It needs to migrate south to avoid the harsh northern winters On autumn nights from late September to October, they make the journey to the UK. During the winter, they're a common bird roaming the countryside looking for berries and the last of the remaining insects. By March or April, they will have returned to their breeding grounds in the north. While they're here it's your chance to see and photograph them. If you know where trees with berries like Rowan are to be found, you can go and stake out the locality. You may be able to catch a glimpse of a Red Wing. Perhaps ornithology is not your thing. Whatever species you are interested in, get to know as much as you can about behavior and seasonal differences. If, like asked, you're more of a generalist with a passion for all things natural, then you need to do a lot more reading. If you see something recorded, take the opportunity to learn about what you've seen. Over time, your knowledge builds. Knowledge is your best chance of seeing more wildlife and nature. Know what you could be looking for and what it is it should be visible at this time of year. Visit your local patch all times of day. Several visits in the wee small hours can be very productive. Nocturnal species of all kinds are a wonder from bats flying and catching insects to mammals and birds that use the cover of dark to avoid competition and predators. It's a world that very few people bother to investigate, but it can be a great source of delight to see something that few other people will have witnessed firsthand. Wind, rain, sun and snow. A typical Scottish day. Just like us, weather is an important factor in the lives of wildlife. Some weather makes it very easy to not make it out of the house. But as the famous saying goes, it's never the wrong weather, just the wrong clothing. Witness the seasonal changes on your local patch. Learn what is out there. 365 days a year. A tip we use all the time. We carry around a series of cards to remind us what could be active at a particular time of year. They also contain information about life cycles of certain species. The cards are stored on our phones, allowing us to know what we're probably going to see. Information like being on the lookout in early spring for bat just emerged from their winter roost. They may be active on warmer nights perhaps, only for a few minutes before returning to the warmth of the roost. Or may be the Bog asphodel should be coming into flower in the following weeks. These cards have been built up over the years and are very specific to our local patch. They account for the prevailing climate and altitude of where we live. We also keep them up to date, adding information as and when it changes, or new research sheds light on some aspect of the life cycle. New information is being produced at almost a monthly basis. So slow down and look around. Don't take the dog. Especially if you've a very active dog, not used to sitting around for hours doing nothing. You need to concentrate on one thing, not on a distraction. When you arrive at your local patch. Here are a few things you should be doing. Take a note of the prevailing wind direction. If you're looking for mammals, wind direction is important. You need to approach from downwind and with the wind in your face. You’re scent is being a blown away from your subject. With scent sensitive species you need to plan your route. Bearing in mind the wind direction. This is where local knowledge is key. You will know how to skirt around the most likely productive area and approach from downwind. What's the time of day and the weather conditions when you visit? These play an important part. Light and temperature levels determine what you're likely to see. Cold blooded reptiles and insects are not very active in the early mornings. Being cold blooded, they need to warm up before starting the day. So early mornings are a great time for observing. Cooler mornings, slow your subjects down in a few hours time or you're going to see a flash of movement. At the start of the day, the cold is your friend. Everything is going to be waiting on the sun's rays to warm up to operating temperature. Find an area where the sun is just starting to warm up the environment. You may find insects or reptiles sunbathing, overcoming the cold of the night. Getting up to temperature to start the day's activity. Even if butterflies are already on the wing. They fly a lot slower in the early morning cold. By midday the heat means they are able to fly faster and it makes them more difficult to see and photograph. Different weather events affect your local patch. Heavy falls of rain or snow are going to change its habitat. One of the joys is knowing what the changing weather brings. We have several rivers that are breeding grounds for Atlantic salmon. The returning adults are trying to reach the headwaters to complete their breeding cycle. To navigate the small, shallow streams where they will lay their eggs or jump waterfalls in the main course. They need plenty of water at the right times of year, just after heavy rain. Is the time to go out and watch adult Salmon, jumping the falls. Without enough water going over the falls, the salmon will wait below, the falls in pools and you'll be lucky to see one. Geology, by which I mean the structure of the earth on or beneath its surface is an important factor in the topology of your local patch. Geology determines soil type. It also determines its altitude. This influences the length of the season, its rainfall. All this influences the flora that grows there. Knowing what plants is growing can be vital. Not just because you want to photograph the plants. But in the animal kingdom, many species have developed a relationship with plants. In some cases you find a species has a preferred food plant to make sure offspring have enough to eat, adults will lay their eggs only on one species of plant. Availability of certain plants can be key to work out where to look. Identification is the key. Knowing what grows where saves you a lot of time and effort. Where we used to live, we wanted to photograph the brown hair streak butterfly. Which are quite rare in southern England. A wood near Oxford is well known for its population of hair streak butterflies. It's a wood we used to visit regularly, local to us. The larva of these butterfly species feed on blackthorn and wild plum, both of which grew on the site. But the butterflies tended to confine themselves to just a small area of the wood. At the right time, when the adults were on the wing and it was going to be a fine day. We would either arrive early or stay late into the evening. The coolness of the start and finish of the day gave us the best chance of butterflies being a bit slower. Knowing the reserve meant we knew where we had to. The best chance to photograph the adult butterflies. Countless visits are giving us the knowledge to increase our chances to see or photograph these rare butterfly. We've looked at the benefits and some of the problems with keeping it local. You should now have a few ideas about where you can visit on a regular basis. After all, it's not like you must abandon all other trips you take. Local is in addition to those trips. It keeps you fresh and looking about. You get to practice your observation and identification skills and to take a lot of new pictures. Local is a place to try something new. To experiment. Do something you've not tried before. If it’s not 100% success. You get to try again on your next visit or learn from your earlier visits and try something different. Better local than on a once in a lifetime trip and getting it wrong. In most cases, local is not going to be a spectacular as a planned expedition. Probably you're going to be working on a whole different scale. New finds on a local patch are rarely going to get the adrenaline pumping like a cheetah hunt. Having said that, I still get an adrenaline rush when the unusual wanders into our garden. After six years of seeing Badges almost every night, I still get excited watching the lives of Wild Badgers un-fold. If you're into conservation, look out for citizen science projects. Here in the UK wildlife organizations ask for help from the public in the gathering of scientific data. Some are surveys you can conduct from your dining room, recording bird numbers, visiting your patch. This surveys conducted every year by a large number of people. It gives organizations an opportunity to monitor wild bird life numbers. If you're not into citizen science, how about volunteering? Many of the guardians of our wild spaces rely heavily on volunteers to carry out maintenance and other much needed work. If you want to work out and help at the same time, go do some physical work that will help your local environment. Why not cancel that gym membership altogether? Buy yourself a camera and a range of lenses, put it all in a large rucksack and then go and photograph small wildflowers all day in the pouring rain. Think big, heavy pack, long walks squatting down to look at every flower crawling on the floor. A bit of yoga stretching to avoid damaging the local environment. Lifting the heavy pack from floor to shoulders all the while whilst wearing full waterproofs. A workout for mind and body, all in the quest of a few nice pictures. Are you inspired yet? We do hope so, because keeping it local has a lot of things to offer. Very often we want to venture far and wide to see new things. Perhaps we've seen it in a book or a magazine. All too often we are seduced by the exotic, dark side when the real treasures are just a few steps away. Think of what you're missing just because you don't know it's there and can't be asked to find out about it. Be brave. Be adventurous. Keep it local. That's the end of our podcast. We hope that you'll be inspired to maybe try something new. Go out and explore locally. Thank you for taking the time to listen. My name is Mark Bloomfield. You've been listening to a wildlife and photography podcast produced by M&J Bloomfield. For more information, details about us and our work, visit our website at mandjbloomfield dot com. Thank you for listening and we hope you join us again soon. Chun an sin, mar sin leat.