Villager Jim's Garden Wildlife

By Villager Jim

Birds, bees, and a whole host of other flora and fauna that share Villager Jims garden in the tiny Peak District village of Foolow, are featured in this stunning book of photographs. Bobbin Robin is just one of the regular visitors to the garden; she and her friends have a huge social media audience, with tens of thousands of viewers. Open up the book to see the daily goings on of these wildlife friends in some of Jims very best pictures taken in this beautiful setting. They illustrate the close relationship Jim has formed with some of the regular wildlife visitors to his garden. His quirky captions capture the mood and spontaneous character of each individual shot and are an essential element of what makes Villager Jims pictures so special.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781526706737

Book preview

Introduction

Taking photographs of the creatures in my garden is one of the most intimate aspects of being a wildlife photographer. We are lucky to have a fairly large garden, extending to about an acre. It is bordered by many coniferous trees, which act as great staging posts for garden birds to travel from one to another safely, away from the beady eyes of birds of prey. A substantial pond in one corner is home to perhaps fifty large goldfish and koi carp.

Our house is one of the last in the village before it merges with the spectacular Peak District countryside. We have our own field where our horses live, which adjoins a small woodland copse. After that it is farmer’s field after farmer’s field, so as well as enjoying the company of the many birds that are common to everyone’s garden, we have barn owls, tawny owls, buzzards and sparrowhawks paying us the occasional visit. There are also pied wagtails, woodpeckers, wrens, swallows … and countless others. We have an abundance of moles, shrews, mice and other little furries such as rabbits and hares, and even the odd stoat and weasel. The more formal areas of the garden are the domain of my wife, who is constantly battling the munching of her tender plants by baby rabbits. (She never takes any measures to exclude them, of course, as I love them being