Eagles and Egg Collectors

 One of the books I have borrowed from my friend Carl Jones is "The Golden Eagle" by J Whitaker. It is a compendium of records, diaries and articles from several generations of egg collectors, one of whom was the author's father. It makes extraordinary reading. You can't help admiring these men (and they were, of course, all men) for their stamina and determination. It makes us modern bird-watchers look like wimps. Here is a typical passage from 1849 by "JW":

"We reached the crag after a walk of eight or nine miles from the village. ….arrived at the shepherd's house, he agreed to come with us, and his son was to show us the nest….(The plan was to shoot the bird and take the eggs.)

"Having reached the top in about half an hour, I tied myself to the thick rope and proceeded, gun in hand, over a ledge to an undercliff…..After a little difficulty (for there was no depth of soil) we fixed the big stake firmly above a very steep slope……Having spliced the rope to the stake upon which I was to sit, and tied myself in, …I proceeded over the edge, which , to my horror, I found almost as sharp as a knife.

"No sooner was I over the rock… than I saw the nest with two eggs, beautiful, and very different from each other. I could just reach the ledge with my fingers and unshod toes, and so, having cried 'Stop' I hung, with the rope heaving me backwards towards the abyss…

"On looking at the eggs in the nest I at once saw a hole in one, as if the old bird had dug her claw into in in her hurry, but on further examination I found that it had a young one in it just hatching…..I reached the eggs and put them in the box with tow, which I had lashed under my right arm.."

Seventy years later, little had changed. Here is a passage from the diaries of the author's father:

1st April 1920

"When I got over the cliff edge I found then nest built in a deep angle with the rock slightly overhanging. ….I had to pull myself in by getting hold of the edge of the nest and it was so large that even when I got my knees on the edge of it I could only just reach the eggs which laY about 6" apart, in the centre.

"They were fine, well-marked eggs and when I blew them I found they were practically fresh…"

It seemed that, in the 1940s, 'fake news' was rife, and the Daily Mail was accused of propagating 'protectionist' untruths. This is from an editorial in the oological magazine "Birdland":

"It is a pity our great National newspapers, which have in the past rendered such splendid service to our country, do not endeavour to be more accurate when dealing with matters outside the scope of the average reporter……

"It is because of these ridiculous and inaccurate statements which have been appearing in our press for many years that we, as a nation, are extremely ignorant of the birdlife of our country and the majority have an entirely biased opinion of oologists or egg collectors."

One of the letters the editor received urges his readers:

"So, readers of 'Birdland' ….let us join battle with anyone who attempts to bring discredit on us, be he Editor, Journalist or Protectionist. I enclose copies of correspondence which I have recently had with the Editor of the News Chronicle which proves my previous point and shows that he at least is a stout fellow. No protectionist propaganda has appeared in his paper since my letter was written."

In some ways these men are right. As a general rule populations of wild birds are not threatened by the loss of a few eggs as long as they have time to lay again.  Natural mortality rates for fledglings can be staggeringly high. Only 10-20% of blue tits, for example, reach their second year. When I was at school in the early fifties, birds-nesting was a perfectly normal hobby for a country boy. The big problem with egg collectors, and the main reason they are so demonised now, is that once a species becomes threatened, the eggs attain rarity value. The greatest prize would be the last clutch of eggs laid by a species threatened with local extinction. This is where a relatively harmless hobby turns into a serious crime.

Not only do egg thieves face a prison sentence if caught, it is now an offence to disturb protected birds at their nest site.  So, in my quest for good pictures of eagles, I must face not only long and arduous hikes carrying heavy camera gear, but the absolute imperative of not distressing the birds.

How I intend to do this will be the subject of later posts.

Planning the Trip

I'm making good progress in deciding on my itinerary. Thelma's birthday is the first of May, so I will be leaving the next day. I'm not by any means a natural driver, and with the radio offering me little more than speech- or music-flavoured noise, I drive in silence. When I have long distances to drive in the van I usually set off at or before 6:00, do an hour's driving and then stop for breakfast. By breaking up the day into roughly two hour shifts I can manage 400 miles, but it's much better to stop at an interesting place en-route. Before I began writing today, the plan was to drive 200 miles to an area we have visited frequently in the last few years: Lancaster, and more specifically the RSPB reserve at Leighton Moss where I took this picture last winter:

Then as I was looking at the map I realised I could just as easily get to another wetland bird sanctuary: Caerlaverock near Glasgow.  The itinerary is now updated, and I will have an easy 195 miles to do the next day to a place I visited when Thelma and I stayed in Oban for a week in 2014. We were looking for interesting places we could get to by bus, and chanced on the slate museum at Easdale. This is a tiny island off the tip of the larger island of Seil. It did not look as if the bus stopped there, but it clearly did stop at the ancient bridge from the mainland to Seil which has the grand name of The Atlantic Bridge, because the narrow gap opens into the ocean. The bus travelled over the bridge and stopped. We got out, and the bus, instead of turning round as we expected, simply went off down the only road. My online map showed Easdale a good 5 miles down that road, but it was a fine day so we set off to walk. Within half an hour the bus passed us in the opposite direction. Two hours later we got to Ellenabeich, the village where the bus terminates and where a little ferry takes visitors to Easdale, the slate island. By now Thelma was exhausted and had altogether lost interest in any kind of museum. The next bus was due in a few minutes so she decided to go back and I stayed, taking a later bus back.

It's a delightful place. This is the ferryman's hut, which features in my story (se below).

There is something about the combination of factors - the little ferry, the slate workings, the Arts Centre (yes) the beauty of the surroundings.

This heady combination stuck in my memory and a year or so later I began writing a story, using it as one of the main locations. It was an ambitious plan, set in a future "Caledonia", and so difficult was the plot line I had set myself that I abandoned it in 2016. However, Easdale was not lightly to be sent to the archives, and I am now again working on the idea and have some 25000 words written, so I didn't need much excuse to make it my next destination. Here the birds will take third place. I plan to walk around, talk to people, find out more about the main island, and, of course, take a few pictures.

When we stayed at Oban in 2014 we visited Mull on a day trip as foot passengers.  It was a guided nature trip where we were pretty much guaranteed a tick list of the main attractions. Sure enough, we did see an otter, but in the far distance. The sea eagle too was not much more than a blob at the top of a tree. We had a better view of a Golden Eagle, and it was an interesting day, but I've still little idea where we went. I did a second trip with the Brompton bike, and got a closer view of a golden eagle towards the end of a 36 -mile bike ride which left me totally exhausted. 

This time I plan to take the van over on the ferry and spend several days searching out some of the eagle's nest locations I have recorded. Mull is a very popular tourist destination, so my love of solitude in wild places might have to take a back seat. However, the following week will be spent in a very different way. I plan to leave the van in Mallaig and take the ferry, first to Eigg where I have booked 3 nights in a "pod" and then to Rum where I will be in a hostel. For both trips I'll take the bike, and am really looking forward to finding out what life is like in these tiny communities surrounded by stunning natural landscape.

The second half of my trip deserves a separate entry, so more of that later. Meanwhile here is a map of Eigg:

Big lenses

I've done it!

It took some doing mind: a lot of calculations, poring over spreadsheets, and projecting future credits, but at length I convinced myself. I've been nurturing  a pot of capital set aside to pay the interest on a legacy my mother left to her great-grandchildren when they reach adulthood. I am now confident that there is a surplus in the pot which I could justifiably spend! However,( I rebuke myself), it must only be spent on capital goods - things that retain their value; things like big lenses.

For wildlife photography, unless your concept of wildlife is limited to insects and small slow moving creatures, you need a lens which can magnify your subject at least as much as a pair of binoculars will. My present long lens is the new version of Canon's 100-400 f4-f5.6 lens, the mark 2. It's a wonderfully versatile lens and I've taken lots of excellent pictures with it, but it is limited in its range. Objects -  usually birds - in the middle distance are hard to get clear, so for some time I have been thinking about an upgrade. There are many classes of consumer goods where moving up a notch is relatively easy. You look at the specifications, decide what you can afford and buy. Lenses are horribly complicated. It's taken me a long time to learn all the complications and I would like to try to pass on that knowledge to anyone interested. Get yourself well caffeinated and concentrate!

These are the factors governing the choice:

• Price - of course. New Canon telephoto lenses  go from £1000 up to £10,000.
• Focal length in millimetres, from 200 up to 800.
• Widest aperture expressed as an f number
• Weight in kilos.
• Autofocus speed
• Shutter speed expressed as fractions of a second.
• Image stabilisation capability.
• For used lenses, which version of the lens, expressed as a mark number.
• Performance with tele-converter lenses.

Price is self-explanatory, so let's look first at focal length. With a bit of simplification we can say that the base line of the scale is a 50mm lens. That will deliver what you see - no magnification. A 100mm lens will magnify by 2, a 200 by 4 and so on. The binoculars which most bird-watchers use are x8 so the equivalent lens will be a 400mm, which is, with one important exception, the shortest length which will do the job.

 The "f stop" scale measures the size of the gap through which light passes into the lens - the aperture. The f-stop measurement is harder to grasp, because it also affects focus, and the terminology is confusing. "Depth of field" represents the amount of the picture, foreground to background,  which is in clear focus. A lens with a wide aperture - known as a "fast" lens - will have a very shallow depth of field. For example if you focus on the eyes of your subject, the nose and the ears will be out of focus - i.e. blurred. The f-stop scale starts at 1.4, and a lens with this figure would be considered the "fastest" available: one which lets in the maximum amount of light and delivers the shallowest depth of field. The next "stop down" is actually up: 2.8 at which aperture half as much light is being delivered to the sensor. Each time this figure is doubled: 5.6, 11.2, 22.4 the amount of light is halved, but a much deeper field of focus is available.

Next we have to look at what happens when you change the focal length of the lens. Let's take a small but very expensive lens with a focal length of 50 and a maximum aperture of f1.4. Now change it for a 100mm lens. Because the front of the lens is further away from the sensor, the amount of light will have been cut in half so the effective "speed" of the lens has reduced (ie gone up!) to 2.8. To keep the same amount of light getting to the sensor, the lens will need to have a lot more glass in it: it will be bigger and heavier. And this is where we get to the nub of the problem. If my pot of capital was big enough to by a decent family car I could buy the biggest lens which Canon offer: one with a focal length of 800mm. If Canon had simply lengthened the 50mm to 800mm in a tube of the same diameter, the "speed" of it - the f.stop - would have been way off the scale  - in the hundreds. Instead, what the lens manufacturers do is increase the amount of glass to compensate, which means that the 800 lens is very big and very heavy 4.5 kilos. It will also have quite a high f-stop: 5.6, and a very high price.

Are you keeping up at the back? The upshot of all this is that to get the best pictures of birds you need a lens which magnifies the image at least 8 times, delivers a lot of light, and is not too heavy to carry around. Most professional bird photographers use a 500mm f4 lens, which weighs over 3 kilos and costs new around £8000. A 400mm f4 will also do the job and will be cheaper. There is a 400mm f2.8 but it is heavier than the 500 and more expensive still.

I can stretch my pot of money to 2000, for which I can buy a used 300 f2.8 or, at a stretch, a 400 f4, but there are still two more factor to consider: autofocus, and image stabilisation. The slower the shutter speed, the more any movement of the camera will translate into blurred images. The ability of a camera and lens combination to  quickly focus on a moving subject depends on the sophistication of the camera's autofocus system and on the speed and accuracy of the motor drive in the lens.

Now let's bring shutter speed into the equation. The longer and heavier the lens, the faster the shutter speed will have to be to stop all movement. The general rule is that, without image stabilisation, each 100mm of length adds 100th of a second to the shutter speed, thus a 400 lens will need one/400th of a second to stop movement. Early IS systems offered a "2 stop advantage" meaning  you could have the equivalent of 4 times the amount of light reaching the lens and still have a clear image. With Canon lenses the ability of the lens/camera combination to compensate for physical movement resides in the lens, and is again measured in f-stops. The best IS systems (also called Vibration Control in other cameras) offer a 4 stop advantage.  The older variations of the big Canon telephoto lenses have no IS and slower AF (autofocus).

Last factor: tele-converters. These are small lenses which fit between the main lens and the camera, and magnify the image by either 1.4, 1.6,  or 2 times. The newest versions of the Canon ones cost around £300-400 each, a lot less than the extra cost of buying the bigger lens. They have electrical connections which enable IS and AF to operate, though at a reduced level. So, instead of buying an 800 lens, I can fit a 2x converter to a 400 lens and capture images from twice as far. There is however a big downside to these gadgets: loss of light. Here we go again: with a 2x converter you double the f number of the lens, so a 400 f4 becomes an 800 f8. Autofocus suffers in speed and range, IS is reduced, shutter speeds go up and apertures must be wider to get the image.

Now, at last, we are back where we started - my new lens. It's a second series 300 f2.8 with image stabilisation, and it's bigger and heavier than my 100-400 f4-5.6. With a lens this "fast" I can use a 1.4x tele-converter and have a 420 f4 lens, significantly better than my current lens at 400 f5.6. When I don't need the extra length I can use the full capabilities of a very fast lens at f2.8 - the gold standard for most lenses. The big attraction of this lens though was the thought that I could use it with a 2x converter and have a 600 f5.6 lens.

My first tests were disappointing. The light was poor, the subjects further away than I would have attempted with my zoom, and the images were all too soft. Without the converter the lens is wonderful, but 300 does not have the reach I need for wildlife. I've done more reading on the subject and now need a good sunny day to be sure it will be worth the extra capital. Watch this space.

Research

 I have a new lens; more of that later. Today I have something more important to do than testing lens combinations, more important than doing a bit of re-wiring in the camper, even more important than scouring ebay for the next bit of photo-tech: I have borrowed books to read.

On Boxing Day there was a brief window of fine weather forecast in the morning so I decided early to drive down to the nearest place to see interesting flocks of birds: a wetland reserve with a name which conjures up the sounds of ducks and birds with long beaks - Penclacwyth near Llanelli. It's about a 45 minute drive from here and as I passed Llandovery in the grey light of a mid-winter dawn, I pondered on how I would get more information about the eagles of Scotland. Specialist books on birds are expensive and I had just spent a large chunk of capital on a big lens. Driving is a good way of relaxing the subconscious. It allows  space for random thoughts, and there it was! Ping. A light went on. Did I not have a friend who has (probably) the largest collection of books on nature in private hands? Hadn't I been reminding myself to email him? This is the local man who has rescued 9 species from extinction, chief and founder of the Mauritius Wildlife Foundation and international expert in  the techniques used in the conservation of endangered species. We had seen very little of Carl Jones and his family (Paula and their two young children Oliver and Eleri) lately since  we had gone to London to see him collect the prestigious Indianapolis Prize for being a "Conservation pioneer, leader and hero."!

With eagle in 2003

Acceptance speech in 2016

The next we heard was that his life was in danger: he was about to start a daily treatment regime in Swansea for prostate cancer. Emails passed to and fro. The treatment had, so far, been successful and he was in Mauritius until Christmas. Carl would surely be able to lend me a book on eagles - after all he had owned and flown a captive one for years. It would be a good excuse to drop in without ceremony, catch up on their news and enjoy a conversation with old friends. (Both adults are deaf friendly: Carl has a loud voice and Paula a clear one.) I would ring on my way back in the afternoon.

 I was nervous about how I would find them, so was very relieved to find Paula looking fit, healthy and cheerful, Oliver even taller and still a little shy, Eleri little more than a pair of gorgeous bright eyes peeping out from behind Paula, and Car, now officially in remission,  thin and greying but cheerful and more than happy to talk. I left there with seven books - almost all of them collectors' items. They are:

• The Golden Eagle by Seton Gordon
• The Golden Eagle with chapters on The Sea Eagle by J Whitaker
• The Golden Eagle by Jeff Watson
• The Return of the Sea Eagle by John A Love
• A Saga of Sea Eagles by John A Love
• The White Tailed Eagle in Norway by Johan Fr. Willgohs
• Highland Birds by D. Nethersole-Thompson

So that's my research programme. I owe it to Carl not to waste any more time browsing the internet for things of interest, and checking messages on Facebook. Some of the books will be hard going, but I don't need to read every word to increase my knowledge of these wonderful birds. After all I am starting from a very low base. I know a lot more about kites than I do about eagles and that's not saying much.