There is a lot of it: in fact, there is a lot more than there is of the new and this traditional work continues to provide bread and butter income. It is where today’s, perhaps more considered, work has evolved from and as such I’m reluctant to dismiss it.
Here’s a red necked grebe photographed in a lake near Tartu, Estonia, in May 2003. I shipped one of my amphibious hides out to Latvia in 2002 (it is always such a struggle to find good locations for this type of photography in Scotland) and had it put on the bus up to Tartu for working on these birds with Jaanus Järva. At about 1 meter deep, and highly eutrophic, the lake attracted many birds including wood sand piper, little gull and black tern. It was the ideal depth, too, for wading in the floating hide, although less ideal was the methane released with each footfall which accumulated within the domed cover of the hide…