I had been looking forward to today for several weeks now, watching the long term and short term weather forecasts hoping that today was going to be a nice day. I was heading up north to film Red Squirrels with Simon Phillpotts a professional photographer based in the Yorkshire Dales. I was meeting him in the market town of Hawes. As it turned out I had a terrible drive up the A1 with driving rain and heavy traffic congestion, fortunately by the time I reached the town of Leyburn I was a good ten minutes behind schedule, it was market day so traffic here was a bit heavier than normal. Finally, by the time I reached Hawes I was a good fifteen minutes late, fortunately I was able to phone ahead and apologies for my lateness. I changed cars in Hawes and Simon’s wife took us further up into the Dale before the five minute walk down to the hides. The weather here was still wet, drizzly and overcast but the brightening sky looked quite promising. It was quite wet underfoot but once in the hide it was dry and relatively warm. The light was beginning to improve but at 9.00am as I set up the cameras it was still quite gloomy, I had the ISO sett at 12,000 to get a reasonable picture, fortunately the Canon 1DX mk2 is a fantastic camera and handles such settings without any problem. Within just a couple of minutes of setting up the kit I had red squirrels visitors all around the hide. 

I seem to have been getting quite sentimental this past couple of weeks and cannot believe it was twelve months since I last came up to Hawes, I do not know where the time has gone.

The light began to improve slowly as the morning progressed, bearing in mind that I am in the middle of a forest, on a hillside, with no telephone signal so I wasn’t complaining.  I had my Canon 100-400mm lens fitted with a 1.4 converter, clamped onto the window sill of the hide, a flask of warm tea and a pocket full of biscuits, so was a happy little bunny. I had the hide to myself for the day which was really good, I could spread out a bit and change camera positions too. As well as the red squirrels I had a constant stream of visitors, namely Chaffinch, Coal Tits, Great Tits and Male and Female Pheasants. There was a large bird feeder set up in front of the hide to the right, about thirty feet away, probably two to three feet in length, it was full with seed when I arrived and by two o’clock in the afternoon when I left the Coal Tits had emptied the entire feeder, no other bird other than them had got a look in!

What I had really come to photograph today though was the red squirrels, they are such lovely creatures, much smaller than the grey squirrels that I have on my home patch. They are cheeky, inquisitive, nosey and at times quite brave, especially the young kits who on a regular basis plucked up the courage to run straight across the front of the hide, the really brave ones would stop and try and pinch my digestive biscuits which I had out next to my flask. 

At one point I had four reds in front of me and one at the side, I was spoilt for choice.

As lunch time approached and with improving light I was able to reduce the ISO to below 1000 which I was pleased about. The squirrels were active all day, ferreting about for food as they do, often burying their noses well into the undergrowth hoping to find a nut or seed which one of the other squirrels would have placed there, then running off with it and burying it some distance away in what they thought was a safe place, unfortunately though the other squirrels had been watching and pinched the nut and so the sequence went on. They have remarkably sharp teeth, I could hear them gnawing away and watch as they held a Hazel nut between their front paws and manipulated it in such a way to cut a hole into it in order to get the seed from the inside the shell.

Several Pheasants popped by during the morning and I managed to get some nice photographs of them before the squirrels shifted them out of their territory. The squirrels were still coming to visit the hide as I was packing up my gear, still as cheeky and inquisitive as ever.

A great day despite the gloomy weather but this enabled me to get some good pictures. I must not leave it twelve months before my return visit.  Thank you to Simon & Sarah for a great day.