2014 – A Year of Birds

Puffins, Farne Islands, Northumberland

It wasn’t meant to be like this. Neither of us have ever been particularly excited by bird watching, apart from the thrill of a rare and fleeting blue flash of a kingfisher on a walk in the country. And yet our travels in the first half of 2014 have been almost exclusively dominated by birds.

Our first encounters came in January, when a trio of kingfishers decided to pose for the cameras in St Albans’ Verulamium Park. For a couple of months they were happy to fish in full view of an almost-constant crowd, as word got out that these normally shy birds were quite happy to catch their food within a few metres of the big lenses that snapped them.

We travelled to Japan in February to follow the winter festivals in Hokkaido, but while there we set off in an ice-breaker to find Steller’s Sea Eagles and White-Tailed Eagles on the drift ice in the Sea of Okhotsk. We also headed inland to see Japan’s famous cranes as they performed their elaborate courtship rituals on the snowy plains.

When a commission came up to cover a local festival on England’s north east coast, we headed up to Northumberland and arrived in time to see the puffins in great numbers on the islands just off the coast. By now the chunky 500mm lens in which Sam had invested at the start of the year was already paying for itself, and it travelled with us again to the Faroe Islands as we encountered yet more sea birds. I don’t think I’d ever tire of watching puffins in flight and consider myself extremely fortunate to have seen so many of them in the last few weeks.

Anyhow, in the full expectation that we’ve seen all the unusual birds we’re going to see in 2014, here are a few of our favourite photos from this year’s travels. All photos are by Sameena Jarosz.