I have been studying breeding Hobbies in Lincolnshire on and off since 1988 and spend hundreds of hours looking for them and watching breeding pairs. In early spring I tend to be doing other things and let Hobbies slip through the net when they first arrive after confirming they are back in the usual areas but this was a spring visit to remember picking up this gorgeous male as he sat sunning himself on the edge of a forest plantation. He stood out like the proverbial sore thumb against the black backdrop of the mature Scots Pines but he was a long way off and approach meant waking through dense 15 year old conifers that made far too much noise. After a careful approach though I managed to get to a spot where the bird formed a big enough image to make the shot I was after. Getting the exposure right on the bird was the tricky bit but using my normal manual exposure guesswork I kept the detail in the bird’s plumage and set it off against the darkness of the conifers. The green spray of needles also adds to the image which is really about the beauty of the bird but just how small Hobbies are set in the context of mature conifers.

Canon 5D4 with Canon 400 DO2 lens

1/8000th second at f4 and ISO800