“What’s that?” said R and I, almost in unison. Walking around the willow tree and peering upwards, I finally spotted the producer of the song that neither of us had heard before: a nuthatch, calling for a mate. Despite being almost in the centre of Stratford, the little park on the south side of the Avon is home to a good variety of bird life, and continues to turn up surprises.
I couldn’t make the angle any shallower than this, sadly, because a hedge stopped me from moving further back, but I was still pleased to have captured the moment. If you haven’t heard the call before either, there’s a recording of it here.
I’ve just finished watching an enjoyable BBC documentary on the Welsh photographer David Hurn, now in his eighties, who has been a professional photographer for over 60 years and still has an evident zest for his craft, and for life in general. If you didn’t catch it and have access to the BBC iPlayer, it’s here, and I recommend it.
For many decades, since long before photographic prints came to be seen as valuable works of art, David Hurn has been playing swapsies with other photographers, and he recently donated a large part of his personal collection, along with an archive of his own work, to the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, where some of it has been displayed in the opening exhibition of the Museum’s first gallery dedicated to photography. If you want to catch this show you need to be quick, because it closes on 15th April; but more of the Hurn bequest will appear in the next exhibition in the gallery: Women in Focus Part 1, which opens on 5th May and looks equally worth a visit.
