Thoughts on photographing small mammals; conclusions drawn between mortality of subject and quality of photograph

It's June, so there aren't very many birds to watch, take bad pictures of or write about. I have therefore turned my considerable intellect (haha) towards naturally-historical subjects that aren't birds, butterflies or odonatid ringpieces. Here are some thoughts on small mammals.

Usually when I see small mammals they're suffering from acute cases of dead. Take the following examples:

See? Looks like it's got dead.

And this one...

Yes, this one definitely has dead.

And this one too - can't write that off as a cold, it's definitely something more serious. Like dead.

Of course, the big in-the-field advantage to finding small mammals suffering from dead is that they usually stay quite still and therefore make excellent photographic subjects. I have loads of photos like the ones above to back this up. It follows that small mammals that aren't (yet) suffering from dead often make very bad photographic subjects, or at least very challenging ones. The biggest problem is that when they don't have dead they move, all the time, and sometimes really fast. And because they're small, they hide under things. No, photographing small mammals that don't have dead is very difficult and quite unrewarding. Take the following example:


Utter shite.

Now I appreciate that this is quite ground-breaking stuff and that lesser minds than my own might be blown by such a revelations but please, stick with it and at least make an effort: I would suggest that there is a direct correlation between an a small mammal's dead-ness and its suitability as a photographic subject. I even have photos of a red squirrel with teh p0x that's nearly dead and the photo is nearly good. That's damn good proof, right there. The obvious practical conclusion is that if you want to take good pictures of small mammals you have to kill them first.

I think the photo above is of a field vole, though I'm not sure, cos it's not got dead. I know next to nothing about small mammals once you get beyond my stunning insight regarding their photography, and I wasn't quick enough to administer a good stamping to help with making the ID.

The offending rodent was at Wakehurst Place in Sussex last Monday. Wakehurst is where that Millenium Seedbank thing is, and since the Girl did some university thing there once a few years back, we've always meant to go. Aside from the seedbank work and the gardens and landscape the birds were worth the trip on their own. We found two singing spotted flycatchers, bullfinch, all the usual warblers, nuthatch, and both spotted woodpeckers. The sheer number of common woodland birds was pleasingly reassuring.

Of course, we went there when it was still May. If you went there today you'd probably see nothing.

Obligatory bad photo of a common bird, in this case a coy spadger. This post is shite; try not to read it.