I had really been looking forward to today for several weeks now, mainly because I was going to have another session photographing Red Squirrels with Simon Phillpotts a professional Wildlife photographer friend from Hawes in North Yorkshire.

I had been monitoring the weather forecast this past week on a daily basis hoping and praying for a nice day. As it happened it turned out to be a very cold, damp and overcast day. In fact the three to four years I have been coming up to Hawes with Simon, I don’t think we have had a day without rain or snow.

Needless to say the weather didn’t dampen the spirits and the squirrels were on good form. Simon met me in the car park in Hawes at 8.30am and after transferring my two bags of gear, spare winter clothing and tripods into his vehicle we headed off up the dale to our site for the day. The light was very bad unfortunately so I set the camera gear up in the hide and spent the first hour filming from the hide. The light started to improve by mid-morning so after a cup of tea we ventured outside to photo some action pictures. I had always wanted to take some pictures of the squirrels looking into the view finder of my camera, so we set one of my cameras onto a tripod adjacent to a tree stump, squirrels being squirrels are quite naturally inquisitive and after a few minutes, once the squirrels had got used to us, their curiosity got the better of them and they were up the tree stump and clambering all over the camera and long lens. We were standing some ten to fifteen feet away from them at the time, fortunately we managed to get some nice pictures of them with camera number two. Such was their curiosity that at times we had six to seven squirrels around us, clambering up the tripod legs, trying to get into our rucksacks which were on the woodland floor next to us. As well as the squirrels we had regular visitors from male and female pheasants, coal tits, blue and great tits and siskins. 

As the morning progressed the light started to get better and just before lunch we had a good session photographing the squirrels jumping from one branch to another, this is very much a game of chance, waiting, hoping and predicting if the squirrels will actually jump or not. Our patience eventually paid off and I managed to get some nice head first pictures as they came running along the branch straight towards me.

After our lunch break in the hide we spent the afternoon outside in the woodland again filming the squirrels in their natural habitat, unfortunately by around 2pm the cold was beginning to rise up from the wet ground and although I had a substantial pair of waterproof and insulated boots on I was losing the feeling in my toes, so we decided to call it a day. After packing and loading up all the camera gear we left the hide and started the steep ten minute climb up the hillside. No sooner had we managed to get the gear into the car then it started to rain quite heavily. As we drove back down the dale towards Hawes the rain turned to sleet making it a quite unpleasant drive. The temperature gauge in my car was reading -2C at 3pm as I left Simon in Hawes and the journey home. Another great day, let’s hope I can get my feet warmed up and the circulation going again. Thanks again to Simon for giving me the opportunity to film these lovely little Red Squirrels.

A little footnote to the session with the squirrels climbing onto my camera, they have extremely sharp claws, by sharp I mean like razor blades, obviously they need these for climbing over the trees etc, so expect some fine scratch damage to the camera body.