Liam McDowell

Liam McDowell 🇬🇧 Hobbyist Photographer 🦉🐦‍⬛🦊
🗺️ East Anglia
📷 Equipment - OMD OM-1 ii + M.Zuiko 100-400mm

Serial Entrepreneur

Sat on the broken end of a birch stem at Isleham, head turned right round to something well off to the side.Jackdaws are...
11/09/2026

Sat on the broken end of a birch stem at Isleham, head turned right round to something well off to the side.

Jackdaws are the smallest of our crows and the ones you are most likely to have living in a chimney or a church tower. Holes in old trees do the job just as well.

They pair up young and stay with the same bird right through the year, so when you find one on its own like this there is usually another one close by that you have not spotted yet.

Corvus monedula

Swallow up on the rooftops along the river in Ely, and for once not moving.Bill tipped up, warm light across the breast,...
11/09/2026

Swallow up on the rooftops along the river in Ely, and for once not moving.

Bill tipped up, warm light across the breast, nothing but blue behind it.

Almost everything a Swallow does happens in the air, feeding, drinking, even bathing, so the perched ones are the rare view. Rooftops and wires are about the only places they stop for long.

Hirundo rustica

Holding the position and the gaze.Wings out to full width, head tipped down and level, eye fixed on the rough grass unde...
11/09/2026

Holding the position and the gaze.

Wings out to full width, head tipped down and level, eye fixed on the rough grass underneath. Everything else about the bird was moving. The head wasn't.

That is the part worth watching with Kestrels. They will let the body shift around all day as long as the ground below stays sharp in front of that eye.

Ouse Fen.

Falco tinnunculus
UK conservation status: Amber

There are more Wrens in Britain than any other breeding bird, and you still hardly ever get a clear look at one.Most of ...
10/09/2026

There are more Wrens in Britain than any other breeding bird, and you still hardly ever get a clear look at one.

Most of their lives happen low down, in hedge bottoms and dead reed, out of sight and usually only announced by that rattling alarm call.

So when one climbs a grass head, sits upright with the tail cocked and stays put, you take the picture and count yourself lucky.

Wicken Fen.

Troglodytes troglodytes

Ears fully up, eyes half shut. A Brown Hare sat out in the crop at Isleham.Hares don't use burrows at all. They live the...
10/09/2026

Ears fully up, eyes half shut. A Brown Hare sat out in the crop at Isleham.

Hares don't use burrows at all. They live their whole lives above ground and rest in a shallow scrape in the soil, called a form, so staying still and low in a field is pretty much the whole strategy.

Everything else about it looked half asleep in that light. The ears were still doing the work.

Lepus europaeus
UK conservation status: IUCN Least Concern, but a UK priority species after long-term declines

📷 OM-1MarkII, OM 100-400mm F5.0-6.3 + MC-20, 800mm (1602mm equivalent), 1/800s, f/13, ISO 2500
Edited: exposure, colour, crop

Nut-hacking is where the name actually comes from. A Nuthatch takes a seed or a nut, jams it into a crack in the bark, a...
10/09/2026

Nut-hacking is where the name actually comes from. A Nuthatch takes a seed or a nut, jams it into a crack in the bark, and hammers away at it until it splits.

Same trick works on hazelnuts and beech mast, which explains why the bill looks more like a chisel than anything a finch is carrying about.

Lackford Lakes.

Sitta europaea

📷 OM-1MarkII, OM 100-400mm F5.0-6.3, 400mm (801mm equivalent), 1/400s, f/6.3, ISO 1600
Edited: exposure, colour, crop

Everyone knows them for the hover, and fair enough, it is one of the great sights. But a lot of their hunting is done ju...
10/09/2026

Everyone knows them for the hover, and fair enough, it is one of the great sights. But a lot of their hunting is done just like this, sat up on something with a view over one bit of rough grass, waiting for it to move. Hanging in the air costs them, sitting still does not.

Ouse Fen.

Falco tinnunculus
UK conservation status: Amber

Red-backed Shrike with the sort of bill that makes you look twice. It is a small bird, perched up neatly in the green, b...
09/09/2026

Red-backed Shrike with the sort of bill that makes you look twice. It is a small bird, perched up neatly in the green, but that hooked tip gives the game away.

Shrikes are passerines, but they do not behave like the soft little songbirds people expect.

Lanius collurio

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