Bunny

Spent about an hour creeping through the grass for these, whilst random people wondered what the bally heck I was up to and the wife got increasingly bored. But I couldn't have been happier, and the peekaboo look of this just makes me chuckle.

I think this was the last shot before he legged it. I have to confess I wasn't even that close - some judicious cropping has gone on here.

Just a horse in a field. I had the 70-300mm lens on and this was as far back as I could get - but in the end I quite liked it.

Some sort of gazelle thing at Longleat, posing for all he's worth.

Goose

I felt quite pleased with myself for this - no cropping or anything. It looks nice in colour too but I thought the mono conversion gave it a nice classic portrait look. Geese are people too. Maybe.

You don't see many shots of pigeons (or at least I don't) but they're probably the most familiar wildlife around us. I wish I'd got a bit closer and placed the corner of the frame in the middle of his back, but never mind - he makes me smile and that's important.

I was at Slimbridge for a seminar from Andy Rouse and Laurie Campbell, and one of their big themes is to the environment in the shot. This was one of my (fairly dismal) lunchtime efforts and let's not even talk about composition. But every picture holds lessons . . .

This is one of those shots that I took with B&W in mind. I'm often struck by how little mono wildlife work you see. Now, there's probably a very good reason for that - but by the same token if you can make it work you've done a Very Good Thing. I was tempted to crop so the gravel went all the way to the top of the frame, but it just looked too uniform. Unsatisfactory as it is, I prefer the hint of a wider context.

If I could have engineered this shot without a horrible background i would have. But I couldn't, and I liked the arrangement too much to let it go.

For all it's compositional faults it's the only squirrel picture I have. And how can that not be a favourite.

We came across some snipe quite by accident - they were in a field by the ZaanseZscans open-air museum in Holland. Kicking up a hell of a racket because they had young in the field, and cows were ambling about. Of course I tried to get shots of the chicks and of course I failed. But I like the grumpy look.

Snipe