I went to the River Birch Hide at least 4 times in 2022 / 2023 trying to get photos of a mink that appears at the river hide. But no luck, I knew it existed because I saw photos from other photographers on Facebook. Then on about the fifth visit the mink showed up - excitedly I took a load of shots and then realised that the netting on the hide had gone in front of the lens and distorted all the images. I managed to release the netting and get a few 'record' shots of a mink. The desire was there to get a few better ones, the images I took had bait visible or the scene was cluttered. So on my last visit (attempt #6) Aidan advised to go to the river hide for the mink first. Which I did. However, the mink appears to be a right joker indeed. I had waited patiently all morning, and after nearly three hours I decided I shouldn't wait any longer to go to the portaloo - all seemed quiet. However, strolling back to the hide I gets a message on my phone from my hide mate with one word QUICK, it could only mean one thing. I was going to miss the mink AGAIN!!! I hurried, but without making a scene, and sneaked back into the hide. Thankfully, the mink didn't notice and I managed to get a few half decent shots.
In addition to the mink appearing, I had other challenges. Mink are very fast so they are hard to track and focus, but more significantly because they are dark coloured their eye is less obvious and eye tracking on my mirrorless camera wouldn't work. I realised that the eye tracking makes you lazy so I was certainly slower in locking focus manually. Once I managed to sort focus and concentrate I was lucky enough to compose a few images where the bait was not obvious. As usual for in a hide I used my Canon R6 on a gimbal head. Due to the set-up in the hide I found it was easier to use the gimbal on a special board with a bolt in it made by a friend. This is more comfortable that sitting between the tripod legs. I used a shutter speed of 1/1600 sec. for this shot with an aperture of f/6.3 and ISO 4000. In post processing after doing the standard adjustments I normally do to my raw images in Lightroom, I cloned out a branch that was jutting out from the face of the mink. You will notice the bottom of the branch under the belly of the mink. I left this for now as cloning out wasn't working well.
You can view more images of the mink from this shoot at SnappyTimes
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