Behind the photo - the brent blog header

You may have noticed a change on the blog lately as we've updated our header photo to the amazing photo of light-bellied brent geese in flight. Volunteer John Dunn is the photographer and he's kindly written a blog about how to photograph our Arctic visitors.

These pale-bellied Brent geese are the birds that make the Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve famous. The problem for those who would like to photograph them, is that like all truly wild geese, they are very wary, and easily disturbed.

Brent flighting onto the reserve

The flocks of both pale, and dark-bellied Brents can range widely over the mud exposed by the tide, but usually they fly across the river that runs under the bridge on the causeway, at some point of the day. In good light, and some luck, they can get close enough to make a detailed picture possible.

 When birds gather in large numbers close to the causeway, taking pictures from inside a stationary vehicle can be worthwhile. As with all wildlife photography, longer focal length lenses, 300 to 800mm, are likely to be the most effective means of getting close-up pictures, without any. Disturbance to the  subject most especially during the cold winter months, birds that are taking flight from disturbance are losing feeding time that could prove critical to their survival.

If birds flight over the cause way this can provide an ideal photographic opportunity from your vehicle (The causeway can be busy at times please pull in safely to a lay by before taking any photos)
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For more information please see our Photography Code of Conduct.

Here are a few more photos of Brent (All photos in this blog taken by John (c) JJD):