The Trials and Tribulations of Photographing Hawfinches

28th November 2021

By far the best place to see and hopefully photograph Hawfinches in Norfolk is the paddock at Lynford Arboretum. As I walked down from the car park to the paddocks in a light snow shower, a temperature of -1 deg C  and a cold north-westerly wind straight from the Arctic I was a little doubtful whether I would stay the course, as photographing Hawfinches normally entails standing around for long periods of time which is not inducive to keeping warm.

As I arrived at the paddock there was already a party of birders there who said that five birds had flown out of the roost about half an hour ago and had not been seen since. However, as 35 birds had been seen during the week I waited around for a couple of hours hoping for some type of activity. By then it was time to go for a walk to get the blood flowing again, and a couple of Hawfinches had been found in trees above the Lynford Hall bridge

I joined the gathered throng and eventually managed to locate one of the birds that was reasonably unobscured and took a couple of shots. So at least one in the bag, but just about what you would expect at a range of 200 yards!!

I then walked up the lane and found one much closer but obscured by a least a dozen twigs, so not much better.

Back at the paddock, a single bird flew into the top of their favourite Hornbeam with the sun allowing the best shot yet of a Hawfinch's back.

At that point 15 birds flew into the Alders down by the lake. There are six birds in this shot, but again about as good as you would expect at a range of 200 yards once again.

Then about an hour before dusk three birds flew into the Hornbeam and sat there for a while enjoying the late afternoon sun. This was about as good as it was going to get.

The distance from the top of the Hornbeam to the track where I was standing as measured on Google Earth was 100 yards, so I am indebted to the sunlight and my camera for producing some reasonable record shots at that range, and now off back to the car to warm up.