Tales from the Wild

Hide and seek - part 1

One of the best ways to get close to wildlife in order to photograph or film it is to use a hide, or a ‘blind’ as they’re called in the states. Essentially a tent like structure with a camouflage pattern used in order to fool the wildlife into thinking you aren’t there. They come in all shapes and sizes and as you might imagine some are better than others. I’ve used many different kinds through my wildlife filming and photography career so thought I would share some of my successes, challenges and of course the failures whilst using them. I’ll focus on my experiences in the UK for this post. 

In Orkney I’ve used them almost exclusively for photographing birds but one of my first ever assignments at the beginning of my wildlife filming career involved using one to film the grey seal pupping season. Orkney has internationally important numbers of grey seals and I was tasked with filming them for a BBC series called ‘The Great British Year’.

For this I used what was called the ‘standard dome hide’ from Wildlife Watching Supplies in the UK.

As the name suggests its more dome shaped than tent shaped and so is ideal for filming as it allows you to sit on a box or chair and have a little room to move around. This hide uses two aluminium tent poles for rigidity and the canvas like material is tough and waterproof to a degree. 

With the nature of the kit involved these larger hides provide enough space for the large heavy tripod legs to spread out without touching the sides. If you’re hide is too small and the legs go underneath the sides any kind of movement to the hide fabric will be noticed as wobble or shake in your footage. This was back when the Panasonic Varicam P2 camera and the Canon HJ40 long ens was the standard wildlife filming set up and took up a lot of room in the hide. 

A few days into filming and the weather took a turn for the worse with strong winds through the night. As I approached the hide from along the clifftop the next morning I could see that it was at an angle and thought it must have moved in the wind. However as I carefully approached I could see the hide was still moving, I peered inside to find a newly weaned young grey seal pup fast asleep inside! The air inside the hide was warm and had a distinct wet-dog smell about it. What a clever pup I thought, sheltering from the bad weather. What I now know is recently weaned pups often spend a lot of time at the top of the shore and even move inland loafing in ditches and puddle until they are ready to go to sea. The comedy of the moment wasn’t lost on me as the the seal pup poked its head out of one of the filming windows and promptly fell asleep!  

As you might imagine it had no intention of leaving and I didn’t want to spook it too much. I let it know I was there by talking to it and gave the hide a gentle shake but it took a few more shakes before it got the message! It took quite some time to clean all the fur out of the hide. 

One of the things I changed when I got my next dome hide was to get a zipped back rather than tie ropes. This keeps the wind out and helps with stability. I have however gone through multiple sets of poles, its not always easy to thread them through, especially in windy conditions when the strain can become too much and a split appears in the pole. Once that happens it’s game over as the structure relies on the pole tension exactly the same as a tent. This hide also has pockets in the inside and so if it’s especially windy I can put rocks in them to add weight.

On a shoot for BBC Springwatch I was provided with a similar hide in order to film an Oystercatcher nesting on a rooftop in Aberdeen. Whoever had used it before me had declined to inform me one of the poles had snapped and had clearly tried to bodge it with gaffer tape rendering it completely useless.

This hide also uses guy ropes for extra stability and this is an important consideration for me in Orkney. It is more often than not windy and although lots of people like the convenience of ‘pop-up’ hides they are often ‘flappy’ and not very stable even when roped down. I’ve been in hides like this before when there’s been a gust of wind and the birds in front of me have looked up because of the noise of the flapping, aware something isn’t quite right. 

If you’ve gone to the bother of setting a hide up then it’s likely you will be spending a long period of time in it and so the more you can provide yourself with creature comforts the more likely you are to stick it out. There’s nothing worse than being cold and realising you’ve left your food and drink in the car.

Most hides are a compromise to some degree between size, ease of use and rigidity. I’ll often modify the windows myself on the side so that I can get a larger window allowing me to film out of the side. When you both film and photograph you realise how much easier life is if you’re only taking still images! 

You don’t want your hide to attract unwanted attention from people either and so it pays to find places where you can get out of the way and ideally use existing cover such as a bush, or bracken to help break up your outline. People are nosey by nature and I’ve been in situations were people have approached the hide and asked what I’m doing, defeating the purpose of putting it up in the first place! 

Some animals require a more extreme approach such is their timid and wary nature. Wildfowl and the larger waders such as curlew fall into this category. For this I used to use what is know as a ‘bivvi’ hide. It's as simple as it gets, a yoga mat and a tent sheet draped over the top so you’re essentially lying on the ground. I wanted to get close to curlew which are notoriously wary and so I embellished the sheet with seaweed and loose grass so I was as unobtrusive as possible. I won’t lie, this isn’t comfortable and my neck suffered as a result.

A little luck is involved here as I essentially had to guess how high the tide was going to be that would allow me to get as close to the birds as possible without getting wet from the incoming tide. I set up a few hours before high tide, waiting for the birds to come in and roost and it can be remarkably successful. 

Frustrations can arise though when you’ve backed yourself under the sheet, looked through your lens only to realise you haven’t moved a bit of seaweed now sticking up and ruining your image! 

I’ve since bought myself a posh version based on the same idea. It’s made by Tragopan and called the Hokki 3. It's more rigid and lies low to the ground and I use an inflatable thermarest to lie on. Last summer I used this hide to photograph a lapwing on its nest on my sister’s farm. I do very little in the way of nest photography as there is a certain element of disturbance but I’m very strict with myself. The lapwing is a bird in much decline and I thought it was important to highlight its plight for a new book I’m working on about wildlife found on farmland. 

In a situation like this I got my sister to walk with me to the hide and then got her to walk away again. This fools the bird into thinking your gone and it came back to the nest almost before I was properly settled! When I was finished I got her to do the same again, so as not to give the bird a shock by me suddenly appearing 15 meters away from it. 

I wish they had put zips on the little side windows though instead of hooks as it allows the cold air to come in. Although more comfortable, when you crawl inside you are settling in for a good period of time you still have little room for manoeuvre. The eye level shots of the lapwing made the discomfort worth it but my number one tip for this hide, go to the toilet before you get settled as there’s no way to go when you’re in. The second is to remember your reading glasses, you lie close to the camera so unless you have young eyes you won’t be able to see what’s on your screen! In 'Hide and Seek - part 2'

hear about how I've used hides on the roof of the world, the rainforest and in in the arctic.