In the second part of my winter hide series, I can show you a few moments that made my wildlife photographer's heart beat faster 😉
Wildlife series usually come unexpectedly anyway; I had actually planned to devote myself to a - for me - ‘new’ eagle owl spot in Bochum in February, which I had visited for the first time in December. I have a lot of these owls in my portfolio, but I'm still missing the winter or mating phase.
However, since the end of January, the grey-headed woodpecker has suddenly appeared more regularly than usual at a friend's winter hide.
During the very cold period between the end of January and the end of February, this woodpecker, or more precisely the pair, appeared more regularly at the hide. So I decided to work on a series about this interesting bird species.
In my eyes, grey-headed woodpeckers behave a bit like a “grey” eminence. In recent years, I have often heard them, sometimes seen them fly over, they were always somehow present and yet I had no chance of a photo or close sighting.
This bird species is highly endangered in Germany and is therefore on the red list. Similar to the more common green woodpecker, they are ‘ground woodpeckers’ and prefer to feed on ants. The woodpecker is quite large; from time to time we saw it next to a great spotted woodpecker or middle spotted woodpecker, the latter looking practically half its size.
I was also fascinated by the grey-headed woodpecker because of its colour - it looks great in good light and changes between green and yellow depending on the incidence of light, with the upper part of the rump always looking yellow.
The eye colour of the male is a strong red, whereas the female had a pink-coloured eye, which I had never seen before in the animal kingdom. But I did some research and this doesn't always seem to be the case - sometimes males also have pink eyes and females red. Perhaps this is more to do with age or other factors.
Photographically, there were many challenges to overcome:
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Firstly, unlike the other woodpecker species, the grey-headed woodpecker flies silently. This means that it is often only noticed (too) late. With the
great spotted woodpecker, for example, you can hear immediately whether and where it is flying to
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Secondly, the first 10 seconds after landing are particularly important from a photographic point of view, as it then often adopts a more
upright posture and, above all, does not yet have any food on its beak, which quickly looks unattractive
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Thirdly, he rarely came - sometimes only for a few minutes in 4-5 hours. The times were also different every time, sometimes only in the
morning, sometimes only at midday etc. This also meant that you usually couldn't take photos in the best light, especially as he was very rarely seen in the first hour of the day anyway
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So you needed diffuse but definitely brighter light during the day, otherwise the colours don't work and the green quickly looks ‘dull’ - with direct
sunlight, on the other hand, the pictures also looked unattractive, as the forest in the background simply gets too harsh contrasts. Overall, I had to be selective here and had the woodpecker
in front of me several times without taking the shot because the conditions weren't right...
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Technically, the depth of field was also a big challenge. Almost all the pictures were taken at 600mm on full format (the others at 840mm) and although the
magnification makes beautiful details and good bokeh visible, it also means that only a fraction of the bird is in focus as soon as it roughly points its tail towards the photographer, or in
the opposite direction. And that's what woodpeckers like to do. Once I was even able to ‘stack’ it, but that is of course neither practical nor particularly successful with moving animals.
The solution lay simply in the number of sightings - only very specific body postures were suitable if you wanted to have the majority of the bird cleanly in the focal plane. This also
resulted in a large reject
- Last but not least, there was a ‘problem’ that I have never encountered in 16 years of bird photography: strong moiré effects occur on the upper back feathers of the grey-headed woodpecker. You don't see this in the side view, but only with a larger image scale when the woodpecker turns in a little and shows parts of its back plumage from above. These effects can already be seen in the raw image and although they improve a little with the usual tools (e.g. moiré brush), they do not disappear completely. Interestingly, this hardly plays a role in the print (I printed one in 20x30 as a test), which is why I left it alone even with this level of processing
If you create a series outside a hide, you can change the location more and capture very different light and subject perspectives with different focal lengths - in this respect, of course, you were somewhat limited in a camouflage hide. However, the camouflage and location made this series possible in the first place, as the ‘greys’ are very shy and rare - so my aim this time was more to capture ‘the one photo’ in which the background, perch and posture were right. And for me personally, I succeeded and I'm super happy 😊
What was nice was that young beech trees have the peculiarity of not shedding their leaves until spring - which means you had a kind of ‘autumn bokeh’ at this spot until the first week of March, as there is a beech tree about 3-4 metres high next to the camouflage hut that has completely orange leaves.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Wilhelm Waltermann for the use of his hide and the wonderful photo sessions together; it was a lot of fun 🙏
I hope you enjoy the pictures and best wishes, Thomas
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I hope you enjoyed the series 👋