At the start of June, I decided to make a return to the land of the midnight sun on the Varanger Peninsula in arctic Norway. My last visit was in 2010 and I had some unfinished business with photographing Ruff which was one of the primary purposes of the trip. I expect some of you will not be familiar with Ruff as it is a bird of northern Europe and Russia, that breeds in arctic tundra regions. In my view is one of the spectacular and interesting wading bird (shore bird) species. In the breeding period, the males develop elaborate head and neck feathers with each male being unique in its colour and patterning.
The males gather up on traditional lek sites to display to each other to gain dominance and catch the eye of visiting females for breeding. The males can be split into three types. Those with a dark or ginger neck and head colours which are territorial on the lek, those with white colours which are non-territorial satellite males and sneaky ones which resemble females. The territorial males tolerate the satellite males are more birds on a lek results in more females visiting. Behaviour on the lek is all about display with the birds standing up right, crouching, fluffing up their plumes, lunging and flapping their wings. Occasionally a fight will break out between the males which are short, frantic and brutal. All this activity takes place in complete eerie silence. For a lot of the time the males are just stood around on the lek with occasional posturing towards each other. When a female flies in all hell breaks loose.
During the trip we did two morning sessions on the lek. The first starting at 4 am and the second at 3am. On the first visit we had no hide and the birds were already on the lek when we arrived, so we ended up wading through the adjacent lake as the bank provided cover and slithering up the bank very slowly to get close to the birds in what is a sensitive time and location for them. That morning we had all four seasons of weather thrown at us as we lay on the ground. For the second visit we used a doghouse hide (blind) which we hired from the hotel (my kind of hotel!!) where we were staying which made for some more comfortable photography. For those of you interested all images were taken with the 1dx mk2 with a 600mm lens with and without the 1.4TC.
Below is a selection of images from the two morning sessions.
#1 A close look at the elaborate head and neck feathers
#2 We called this bird, rather unimaginatively, \'Ginger\'.
#3 King of the Hill. This was the dominant bird on the lek. With some un on them they have a wonderful iridescence to their feathers.
#4 Also available in white
#5 and ginger
#6 or cream
#7 or a mixture of the two
#8 We ended up getting very wet on the first visit.
#9 One of the white coloured birds in wing flap which is a common display move
#10 The dominant bird wing flapping
#11 \'Ginger\' getting in on the act too
#12 Posturing to your rivals by crouching, spreading the wings to look bigger
#13 Crouching down is a common display move
#14 as is stalking around low
#15 King of the Hill warning a satellite male to stay off his 1 sq yard patch of lek
#16 King of the Hill in position at 3:30am
#17 Ginger fluffed up, wings down and strutting
#18 Fights are infrequent and frantic and quite difficult to capture
#19 Just beautiful birds
Overall it was a memorable trip with plenty of other birds photographed but the Ruff were the highlight. Hope you enjoyed.
Thanks
Rich
Jul 25, 2016 at 05:33 AM
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