Wildlife Photographer John Scholey + Halloween: 29th Oct 23

Plus condensed listings from our full members' edition, & an invitation to share your local stories of the Halloween season.

White Tailed Sea Eagle - Photo John Scholey

Evening. Sorry for the late posting. I’ve been away for a few days, and needed the break after a busy year launching this publication. Huge thanks to reader and local wildlife photographer John Scholey for his amazing photos of British wildlife this week.

One reason for the late post is to segue into my second piece, about how the change in our evening light, starting today, helps perpetuate some ancient traditions for young people in an outdoor city. Is this still true? Let me know your thoughts.

Over the next week or so I’ll aim to post our What To Look For guide for November, along with a new set of news and features for full subscribers.

An annual subscription to join them (and support this publication) costs you less than a pair of pumpkin costumes. If you want to contribute to the success of a new model of local journalism, please sign up below. Over 130 lovely readers have already got the message that their subscription is what helps pays the bills to cover eight or more posts for thousands of readers every month. Thanks so much to all of you.

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All photos in this section by John Scholey

Time and Patience

Hares are famous for sprinting, as demonstrated by the Tortoise and the Hare fable. What they’re less famous for is their habit of lying still for hours at a time. John Scholey tells how he and friends have an arrangement with a Chesterfield farmer to stalk Brown Hares for photographs.

“We might spend three or four hours moving round the fields really slowly,” John says. “You have to have time and patience for wildlife.”

But in the above picture, the photographers found a group of hares playing. “This is probably my favourite image as I had my camera on burst taking about 10 frames a second when the one hare leapt high in the air,” John says.

Always interested in nature, John began photographing local wildlife around 15 years ago when he retired. A former president of Sheffield Photographic Society, he’s also organised local exhibitions. (The Society’s next exhibition of work is at the Winter Gardens from 3rd to 12th November).

His advice for wildlife photography is firstly to get to know your camera, and what it can and can’t do. Then research your location, and what might be seen there. Or ask around if you’re keen to photograph a particular species. And finally “be prepared to go out when the weather’s not kind,” he says.

The Mountain Hare (below) involved lying in the Cairngorms snow for two hours until the animal raised its head in just the right way.

Although he has travelled for photographs, he likes photographing the wildlife around Sheffield in particular. The Red Deer on Big Moor, for example.

The Blue Tits (below) were photographed at the Shillito Woods car park off Baslow Road, where several bird feeders are set up. “We collect a photogenic branch from somewhere and stick it in the ground near the feeders and the birds will perch on that before heading to the feeders.”

A good location for wetland wildlife is Woodhouse Washlands, where John found this pair of Emperor Dragonflies, a photo later featured in the national magazine of the Dragonfly Society. “The female is ovipositing, laying eggs, in the water and the male is hovering round protecting her.”

Whereas birds and dragonflies require quick thinking and faster shutter speeds, you can try different techniques with stationary wildlife. The photo of a Tulip Tree in the Botanical Gardens (below) is an attempt at multiple exposures (9 in this case) says John. “The camera is on a tripod and you move it slightly left or right between each shot to give this impressionist feel to the image.”

The tree is in the top corner of Osborn's Field, on the right of the Botanical Gardens facing up. John says he photographed the tree many times with a friend from the photo society, Linda Jackson, who passed away recently, one of the reasons the photo is one of his favourite images, he says.

John has visited the islands around Scotland, where boat trips allow photographers to see wildlife in wilder surroundings (such as the Sea Eagle at the top of the post).

One of his favourite photos of all time is below, shortlisted in the Scottish Nature Photography Awards 2020 and the British Wildlife Photography Awards 2023. It was taken at the Hermanness National Nature Reserve on the north west tip of Unst, with Iolo Williams from Springwatch as a tour guide to watch the Gannet colony.

Modestly, John says “I was fortunate to get the shot just as the one Gannet flew across the gap where there were no Gannets nesting.”

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Nightwatch

Halloween is coming. But just before All Souls Eve the clocks change, so nighttime and all its shadows begins just an hour or so after school time ends. Which is so very convenient for kids and teenagers bent on fun and mischief before winter arrives.

Sheffield has a strong tradition of dark autumn customs, and I’m interested to hear in the comments below what readers remember from their own Halloween weeks.

North Sheffield has its Cakin Night, when villagers around Stannington would rekindle the old Celtic customs of getting dressed up and asking for cakes or apples on neighbour’s doorsteps. And for many of us, a supplementary Halloween was Mischief Night on 4th November.

The Werewolf of Wadsley Common at a public night performance on the common

Family-friendly activities included apple bobbing and candlelit feasts, and turnip lanterns, before the arrival of orange American pumpkins. But older kids would be out on the streets in the weeks around Halloween and Mischief Night.

Knock a Door Run, or Ring and Knock, was banging on a door and running off to see the pretend astonishment of the middle aged neighbour who’d shown the same mild annoyance in the same week last year. There was the fun of wiping treacle on door handles and watching from a dark passageway over the road as people got a sticky welcome as they came home from later shifts.

And then there was the widespread northern custom of hedge hopping, immortalised by the great Bob Mortimer under his own Middlesborough title of ‘Theft and Shrubbery.’

You and your teenage mates would climb into the bottom of the largest garden you could find with the back curtains open and someone in, and then creep towards the window until a startled resident spotted you outside. Then you’d leap over or through the neighbouring hedges and congregate a few streets away to carry out your anti-social behaviour at a different garden.

But the most autumnal game of all was less intimidating for the older community. The Wide Game began with the Scouts, I think, but we played it across the whole 240 acres of Graves Park. You had two equal teams and a tree. One team would guard the tree, and the other would disappear into the shadows, and then eventually try and get back to the tree without being identified and caught. You’d spend hours, with one or two mates, hiding in the dark with the cats and foxes, as the other team tried to flush you out. And you’d still be back home by nine, too thrilled to sleep.

The book ‘Kith’ by Jay Griffiths makes the point that kids missing out on an intimate knowledge of their local stretch of park or woodland are losing something of their place in life, to the detriment of their future happiness.

Kith, she says, originally meant homeland, the patch of land where you grew up, that you know like the back of your hand. And I think the early evening darkness of late October gave kids the chance to reclaim their own little patches of homeland in the Outdoor City.

Do any local kids still knock on doors and run, or paste doorknobs with treacle? Or are they all costumed up from Tescos to go trick or treating? Do let me know.

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What’s On Out There (from Sun 29th Oct)

If you’re in a group who put on outdoor events and want me to include them, please stick them in the comments below as follows: Date, What it is, Online link. .

Sun 29th - The Full English with Stuart Maconie (Off The Shelf, £10/8)

Mon 30th - Fri 3rd - Daily health walks in parks and green spaces from Step Out Sheffield, 10 am start

Tues 31st, Thurs 2nd - Green City Action community allotments morning sessions, open to all at the Grimesthorpe Road allotments

Tues 31st - Sheffield Ramblers walk Fungi walk at Shire Brook Valley (6m, starts bus station)

Tues 31st - Kids Scavenger Hunt at Whirlow Brook Park (£5)

Weds 1st Nov - Sheffield Ramblers walk Bradfield & area (10m, starts bus station)

Weds 1st Nov - Social walk (5 miles) from Longshaw

Thurs 2nd - Folk at The Chapel at Sheffield General Cemetery (£10 ish)

Fri 3rd - Sharrow Autumn Carnival (free)

Fri 3rd - Sun 5th - Illuminate the Botanical Gardens (£18)

Sat 4th - Ranger led volunteer session at Wardsend Cemetery

Sat 4th - Community 'thank you' rides round Weston Park with Cycling Without Age

Sat 4th - Fungi Walk at Parkwood Springs with Ziggy Senkans

Sat 4th - Volunteer session at Whirlow Brook Park

Sun 5th - Sheffield Ramblers walk Broomhead and Bostertone (11m) Starts at bus station)

Wyming Brook - Photo John Scholey

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