A visit to Trossachs Osprey Hide

I recently heard through a friend that a new Osprey hide had opened up at a fish farm near Callander. I decided to pay it a visit.

Ospreys are wild birds but they are not stupid, they like an easy meal and will happily take fish from well stocked fish farms. This is a problem if you are running a business but perhaps it is an opportunity too. Trossachs Osprey Hide had decided it was the later and had opened a photo hide charging up to 4 photographers at a time for the opportunity to photograph the visiting Ospreys.

Two friends and I had booked in for the 6-9pm slot at £50 per person. The hide was well set with a comfortable seat, camouflage netting and good views over the small fishing pond. This was a working fish farm which had added photo hides so the setting was not as wild as it could be. For example, three annoying wires crossed in front of the hide which got in the way on some shots.

The hide offered no guaranteed sightings so of course we worried nothing would show but only 10 minutes into our slot the first (of seven) ospreys turned up. This was a ringed bird. It hovered and flew around for about 10 minutes at times looking straight at us, before diving for a fish in a far pond that we could not see.

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A bit later we had more distant views of two separate Ospreys at once. We hoped they were going to come and fish but instead they just flew around in front of the distant hills. At the same time we saw a Buzzard hovering but too distant for photos.

It wasn’t long before an Osprey was back over the pond allowing some close views.

There was some interaction too when an Osprey was mobbed by a Lesser Black-Backed Gull. This carried on for a few minutes.

These were demanding photographic conditions. I was shooting choosing a fast shutter speed (1/3200) to capture a sharp image despite the movement with middle aperture (F9) to allow the whole bird to be in focus. Lastly to avoid the typical silhouetted bird against sky shots most people get, I was shooting in full manual mode and metering on a white-ish Birch tree for the ISO but leaving it about 1 F-Stop under exposed. This was because an Osprey has a lot of white in it, and it is much easier to bring back shadows in Lightroom than recover blown highlights.

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There were various other woodland birds around too. Great Tit, Chaffinch, Blackbird, Dunnock, Song Thrush, Bullfinch all made an appearance but the only one I reset the camera settings for was a family of Great Spotted Woodpeckers which turned up to a nearby feeder. This juvenile was sporting an impressive red cap.

The problem with the evening session is the light was deteriorating all the time. Later in our session an Osprey came in and had a couple of abortive dives in front of the hide. This allowed me to capture a sequence of shots with something other than sky behind the birds.

It was sometimes challenging to stay on the bird with the more distracting background but the R5 autofocus did a great job in locking onto the subject. These are probably the best shots of the night.

Later in the evening the Osprey did dive right in front of the hide, however by now the light was gone and my ISO was set to 12,800 and the shots are unusable.

That said another Osprey did come along at about 8.30 and land in a tree opposite and I was able to capture a couple of perched shots. Because it wasn’t in flight I could pull the ISO back with a slower shot and the image stabilisation turned back on (I had it off for the inflight shots).

So overall a very successful shoot albeit I do need to go back to get The Shot, of an Osprey with fish coming out of the water.

I think next time I will set the alarm and book an early morning session in the hope that the improving light will allow me to capture a diving Osprey in better light.

Oh and for information I took 2100 photos in 3 hours. I deleted all but 100 in the first cull, and have only shown about a dozen in this post! The joys of digital photography.