A day of photography in David Tipling’s stunning bird hide in Norfolk: Sparrowhawks, buzzards and woodland birds
It swoops in swiftly, silently, stealthily and lands on a branch just a few metres in front of us. We hold our breath and quickly refocus our lenses, desperate to capture the moment before it flies off.
The male sparrowhawk, looking pristine in the low winter’s afternoon sunlight, looks around, perhaps seeking a target. But the myriad of small birds that were present were quick to dash for cover into the nearby trees and shrubs.
It doesn’t catch anything this time. But it stays long enough for us to photograph it from our woodland hide. It’s fitted with Stopsol one-way glass, which enables us to get much closer than you otherwise would to such an alert bird of prey. It’s a wonderful experience.
Before long, the sparrowhawk decides to continue its hunt elsewhere.
And within moments, there’s a huge flurry of activity as the small birds that have been entertaining us all day return to feed.
We’re at David Tipling’s hide, near Fakenham in Norfolk.
An award-winning wildlife photographer, David has created his hide in an area of private woodland.
And it’s quite a sight to behold. In front of the wooden hide sits what David describes as something akin to a huge table. He built it so that, effectively, through the photographer’s lens, the woodland floor is raised to eye level. On this structure lies leaves, logs, moss, a small pool and all manner of attractive perches, creating beautiful scenes for the photographer.
And David has carefully hidden food – such as seeds and fat – to attract the woodland’s many species of bird.
Fifteen species visit in the time we are there, including nuthatches, great spotted woodpeckers, marsh tits, coal tits and robins, not to mention a magnificent buzzard – but more on that later.
“I’ve owned the piece of woodland for 10 years,” David explains. “I had some wet woodland to the east of Norwich with a small reedbed in it, but it was a bit of a hike to get there for me so I managed to sell that and this came up.
“It’s part of an ancient wood that was mostly felled in the Second World War for the war effort. The bit I’ve got was replanted in 1949 with a nice mixture of deciduous and coniferous trees. There’s oak, birch, quite a lot of rowan, larch, a nice hazel coppice, and bluebells in the spring, so it still has its ancient wood characteristics with the flora.
“Since I bought it, I’ve made a couple of glades and extended a woodland ride. For the first 18 months, I thought about where to put in a semi-permanent hide, with water, and looked at where the favoured areas were for things to come in and where the best light was.
“I ended up putting a sunken hide in. I dug a pit and we built a hide over it so you were eye level with the ground and I put a pool in front of it.
“But the winters seem to have got wetter over the last 10 years and as the groundwater got higher, the sunken hide started to flood, so I decided I needed something above ground.
“Adjacent to it, I extended a glade, so there’s lots of light coming in, and built a hide above ground, with Stopsol one-way glass. That has been a huge game-changer for me, particularly for sparrowhawks, which are so sharp. You can move behind the glass and they don’t know you’re there. To get the same effect of looking at eye level on the forest floor, I’ve built something like a huge table and put in a raised pool near the hide.
“I switch the props around so the pictures don’t all look the same.”
On the day we visit, David meets us just before 9am on the edge of the woodland. It’s a short walk with our cameras and tripods to the hide. David has already set out the food to attract in the birds and they are already coming down as we set up.
We’re using 200-600mm lenses to give us back-to-front coverage of the whole area, but if you don’t have that level of reach, you needn’t worry. Many of the birds land just a few feet away.
“For the smaller birds, I can move things closer or further away depending on the lengths of your lenses and what you want to do. I’m always very flexible with the props,” explains David.
“I normally have a discussion with people when they arrive and some people want to change it around, while others are happy to leave it where it is. I’ve got some semi-permanent perches that I’ve placed for decent backgrounds but other things can be moved.”
What’s so impressive about this hide is how carefully it has been thought out. None of the food is visible – there are no ugly feeders or scattered seeds that would create unnatural looking scenes. And zooming in on many of the perches from either of the two seats in the hide, you’ll find lovely clean backdrops.
We visit on a freezing cold day – two pairs of socks, gloves, hand-warmers and hats are the order of the day. The conditions are perfect, as a fantastic frost is set in for the day, but the sun is shining and a lovely warm winter light is streaming through to where we sit at the forest’s edge and between the trees. It’s a glorious scene.
And the action is constant from the moment David leaves to the time we pack up after 3pm, when the light is fading. Small birds dart back and forth, perching on mossy logs and on the edge of branches.
Nuthatches – a species I’ve previously photographed many times, but without capturing a single image I’m really happy with – visit time and again, giving us ample opportunity to capture these masked bandits in a variety of attractive scenes.
Great spotted woodpeckers – adults and a juvenile – regularly fly in and spend time on the tree trunks, hunting for the food that David has pressed into small holes out of sight.
Blackbirds – a number of males and noticeably more aggressive females – feed on the frosty fruit.
Blue tits, great tits, long-tailed tits, dunnocks, a wren, jays and pheasants all enjoy the feast before us.
And we’re stunned by what happens next. A buzzard flies in, and perches briefly just a few metres in front of us.
But there’s barely time to photograph it before it takes off and lands high in a tree directly in front of us. It stretches its wings and then, in typical buzzard fashion, is watchful. After a while, it swoops down but flies off to the side of us, out of sight, although we can still hear it calling.
The small birds seem unperturbed and return to their feeding. Then, all of a sudden, they’re gone. And before us, just a few metres away, is the buzzard. This time, it stays. We rapidly shoot a series of images as it sits, magnificently, on a perch and then drops beside an attractive fern.
The one-way glass means it cannot see us and, with our silent shutters, it cannot hear us either. It’s a privilege to witness it so close up.
The buzzard spends some time eyeing up what’s available, which includes some roadkill that David has put out, but it leaves that in favour of something else and flies off to a high perch to eat it.
The buzzard makes one other visit that afternoon, and after it flies off, it’s the turn of the sparrowhawk to land.
Later, a sparrowhawk, perhaps the same one, flies by in pursuit of prey – one of those rapid fly-bys you might see in your garden. But when it’s gone, the small birds are back again, thanks to the work David has put in to attract them.
“I use a mixture of foods and constant feeding, although from the middle of May to the middle of August I tend not to put much food down. Most things are bathing and drinking in the pool then,” he says.
David is also managing his area of woodland.
“The larch were planted in 1949 so a lot of those are coming to the end of their lives and are falling over,” he notes. “About six years ago, I cleared a small area at the field edge and planted a small orchard. I’ve now cleared these larches and extended the orchard. It’s coming along and is a new open area.”
Being private, the woodland is very quiet – ideal for birds for prey.
“There are goshawks breeding close by and a female comes by occasionally,” reveals David. “She doesn’t come very regularly, although she came down in the summer to bathe and sometimes sits quite close to the hide in the winter, drawn in by the small bird activity. There are a lot of blackbirds and thrushes there.”
It’s a wonderful set-up, and a joy to spend time in the hide watching and photographing these birds.
As we pack up and head for home, we reflect on our favourite moments: the visit of the sparrowhawk, the arrival of the buzzard, the close-up views of nuthatches on a sunlit, frosty scene… no wonder we’ve fired off about 3,000 photographs between us.
Visit norfolkphotosafaris.com to book the hide, which costs £150 per day to hire and can accommodate two people. For any questions, call David on 07973 181375 or fill in the enquiry form on the website.
Photo safaris, day-flying barn owls and hares
In addition to his hide, David Tipling also runs a series of popular photo tours - an area of his business that has grown rapidly in recent years.
“I’ve been a professional wildlife photographer since 1992 and the whole way of working has changed so dramatically,” he says.
“I used to mainly shoot stock images and supply stock libraries. I had my first book published in 1995 and have always been involved in book publishing and done quite a bit of writing for book publishers and magazines.
“I made my living out of that and leading two or three tours a year, normally overseas. I’ve taken tours to Shetland every year for the last 30 years.
“I ran a photographic library and represented about 50 photographers for about 10 years. We specialised in birds. But when everything migrated to the internet and I needed to put the library online and it required a lot of funding as there weren’t off-the-shelf websites then.
“I was making a good living supplying various agents so I went it alone then. I was doing well selling pictures and working on books but as everything matured online and prices for picture use started to tumble online, it became more difficult to make a living selling pictures, so I started to diversify a lot more in leading tours.
“Eight or nine years ago, I started doing tours in north Norfolk. Primarily, it was for people asking me about photographing barn owls in the winter, when they are active in the daytime. I took the odd person out and realised there could be a decent business in that.
“I’ve expanded my offering quite a bit and I do day tours between November and May, but the core time is mid-January to late April.
David, an OM System ambassador whose books include Birds & People and A Bird Photographer’s Diary,spends his winter afternoons scouting the most reliable meadows to find day-flying barn owls, as it changes each year.
“Hares are also very popular. I have a lot of people coming out with me in the spring photographing hares,” he says.
Night-time sessions photographing barn owls, trips to see seals and along the Norfolk Broads and one and three-day safaris are also available.
Visit https://www.norfolkphotosafaris.com/ to find out more and book a place.
