At night

27 July 2010

A couple of nights ago I went out into the garden to photograph the moon. There was a lot of cloud around, so it would tantalisingly appear and disappear on me. I made a complete hash of putting the tripod up in the dark, but eventually got it about right and settled myself in a garden chair behind it. As the moon emerged from behind the cloud I snapped away, experimenting with settings to try and get what I could see with my own eyes.

I’d brought my mini Maglite out with me too. Though the display on the D80 lights up if you pull the on switch round beyond the on position, it still leaves the other buttons in the dark and without a torch you’re left fumbling about in the dark changing what you’ve just got perfectly set, instead of pressing the button you were actually aiming for.

I was quite content in the still darkness, watching the moon come and go and the stars start to appear in the summer night’s sky, when suddenly I heard a strange sneezy snuffle off to my right. I froze and stared wide-eyed ahead of me. Ok. I have a torch I can shine over in that direction, I thought, but I’m not sure I particularly want to, because, oh dear God, what if it’s a puma with a cold and it wants to eat me? After a little hesitation I pointed my torch in the direction of the sound and saw … a little hedgehog. Not a puma. He was making his way along the fence, noisily sniffing the ground and heading towards a puma another hedgehog in the corner of the garden.

I summoned Mum and Dad to see our nocturnal visitors and we watched them sniffing around in my dim torchlight. Not wanting to startle the creatures (the hedgehogs, not Mum and Dad) with my flash I settled for just a high ISO setting and torchlight. Sometimes you just have to enjoy something in the here and now and not worry about getting a perfect photographic record. After a while I ran back inside to grab my laptop to see if I could record their wonderfully loud snorting and snuffling. Unfortunately the laptop didn’t pick it up among all the general noise of the night, but I did get a couple of bits of video of them running about.

It occurs to me that I should have pointed them towards my vegetable patch, where I currently only have about 3 little weedy beetroot, slugs having methodically feasted on the leaves all along the row of beetroot I planted. I guess they’ll find their own way there soon enough.