LATEST IMAGES - FINLAND1
It had been a while since I had visited Finland so it was great to be back in May to photograph Ruff on a lek. It was a Finnature long weekend trip based at Liminka bay near Oulu. The accommodation, guide, hides and organisation were great and thankfully the birds were performing well. The bird were lekking on a small bank although they seemed to prefer the far side which was unfortunate but they did come onto the top a good number of times. There are four hides in a line in front of the bank but while I was there the birds lekked just passed the end hide so there was a bit of a bun fight to get in the 'best' hide. Long lenses and convertors were needed for the further away hides. One thing that did disappoint me was the background behind where the birds were leking had a number of very conspicuous grass stems that rather spoilt the images. This could have easily been sorted before we arrived and would have meant many more images not being discarded. The birds did come a bit nearer when they were not actually lekking and here the background was fine. To reduce the grass stem problem I have cropped the images more tightly than I would have preferred. There seemed to be an infinite number of differing types of male Ruff which has helped with the variety of images.
MALE RUFF
MALE RUFF1
FEMALE RUFF OR REEVE
MALE RUFF2
MALE RUFF3