IT'S a photograph that’s almost too good to be true.
It shows a buzzard flying in the Glens of Antrim – and the bird is actually looking at the drone which is taking its picture.
Andersonstown News reader Michael McKernon captured the moment last week and he couldn’t believe his eyes. He was on a day out when he came across this wee river and decided to pull over and put the drone up to get a better look.
Michael (71) has been into both photography and nature since he was a youngster growing up on the slopes of Cave Hill. And, as he says himself, the modern trend of using a drone to capture images from above is a natural extension of that. And the image that he caught in the Glens could well be the greatest he has ever taken.
This one illustrates how wildlife is responding to the next level of human technology. We can’t even guess at what is going through that buzzard’s mind as it glides past that strange metal object buzzing through the air.
“I was driving down through the glens and I saw this beautiful river, and I just thought I’d stop there” Michael told me.
“I saw the buzzard come down and it came extremely close to the drone and then down by the river out of sight. It’s only when I looked back at the footage I realised it was looking straight at the drone and the backdrop of the Glen makes it a special image.
“You hear people talking about their drones being attacked by birds, mainly hawks, but I’ve never had that experience. I’ve always found that as long as you’re not going near their nest they’ll come and have a look, but never that close.
“I love photography and I love wildlife and I’ve always taken photographs of birds since I was a kid. The brothers and me loved finding birds’ nests – we were fascinated by them but we never damaged them. I got a camera and took photographs over many years and getting a drone is a natural extension – you’re getting up and getting a different view.”
For Michael and his brothers, their home is no more. It was in the original Whitewell, a village of three streets beside a quarry on the lower slopes of Cave Hill, just north of the zoo and close to the Bellevue Arms pub. The village disappeared in the 1960s amidst large-scale redevelopment connected to the construction of the M2. Land excavated to carve out the motorway became infill for the quarry.
“It’s the lost village,” Michael said. “We loved it there. Today I go up to Napoleon’s Nose with the dog three times a week. We were all born on Cave Hill so it’s home.
“The wildlife adds to the hills, they bring a different dimension – the elusiveness of birds, finding them, identifying them, photographing them. Nature is just amazing.”
Michael has photographed many birds over the years, and some have been more of a challenge than others. But he has a firm favourite,
“Of all the birds, the tiny goldcrest fascinates me the most because you can hear them, you know they’re there, but even seeing them is very difficult.
“It's very hard to get a good shot of them because they’re always shifting and moving.”
The new freedom and possibilities opened up by his drone have brought Michael far and wide – and not always with the success he enjoyed last week in the Glens of Antrim. “I had the drone up in the Poison Glen in Donegal and it was a windy winter’s day so it took off and ended in a tree,” he said with a chuckle.
Michael couldn’t get it down but five months later he got a call from the owner of the house nearby to say the drone had finally fallen to earth.
“Some of the screws were rusty but the disk, battery and propellers were still working perfectly. Four months it was up in that tree in the wildest climate in this country but I’m still using it.”
•If you’ve seen or photographed anything interesting, or have any nature questions, you can text Dúlra on 07801 414804.
