A window into a secret, wild world
A snap decision to buy a decent camera during the first lockdown has changed Kirk Purnell’s life. He tells BEE BAILEY about woodpecker chicks, elusive barn owls and the mists of Avalon
IT was early in the morning, before most people were out of bed. Kirk Purnell took one of his dogs out for a walk, venturing up on to the Mendip Hills near his Somerset home. He was all alone, no one else in sight as he stood and watched the low cloud roll around the foot of Glastonbury Tor, a magical scene that evoked the stuff of Arthurian legend of Avalon, where King Arthur retreated after his final battle.
Kirk hadn’t really intended to take any photos, but he’d slung his camera over his shoulder, just in case. On that day, the setting was perfect. And so was his shot.
“There was this cloud inversion, a very low fog. It looked like the Tor was the old Isle of Avalon, coming out of the water. There was this lovely golden light coming across from the east, and the Tor was shrouded in clouds. It was just magical.
“I often see this really heavy, low fog just pooling into the Somerset Levels from my house and I’ve always loved that effect but only recently have I been able to take photos of it. My camera was firing off shots like nobody’s business that day. It’s one of my favourite photos.”
Despite growing up in a rural setting in the Rhondda Valley in Wales from the age of eight to 18, Kirk didn’t have a particularly strong connection with the natural world. But taking up photography, almost on a whim, has changed his life. His fledgling hobby has given him a connection to nature, to the land, to animals, to the stars and the weather, to the beauty of the West Country he now calls home.
It all started last May, during the UK’S first lockdown. A local chap had posted a picture on social media of great spotted woodpeckers that were nesting not far from Kirk’s home, in a village near Cheddar. Kirk asked if he could tag along to have a look. He was so smitten by what he saw that the very next day he used some money he’d saved for something else to buy himself a decent camera so he could take photographs of the birds. A week later, Kirk and his new friend, Rob, returned to RSPB Ham Wall nature reserve, and Kirk got his picture.
“These woodpeckers were nesting in this almost-cartoonish, hollowed-out nest, with a round hole in a tree trunk, like Woody Woodpecker,” he says. “I’ve never seen a woodpecker in my life and there was a youngster in there feeding.
“We watched this lovely little family pecking on the tree for insects, and flying in and feeding the youngster. I was a bit blown away. It felt like I was seeing something very exotic, something that I didn’t expect to be able to see in my own backyard.
“It was like a secret window. I grew up in the Welsh Valleys and I live in Somerset so I’ve always been around wildlife but I’d never really looked at it that closely before. I had a love of it but not a great understanding of it.
“The woodpecker picture that I got was of the little ’un poking its head out as it was being fed by one of the parents. It was just that one picture that did it; I was instantly hooked.
“I also saw lots of cormorants drying off with their wings outstretched with these beautiful iridescent colours, and we saw deer. There’s one picture of a deer that I took that morning that felt like a real photographer’s photo. I kept going back and revisiting her, and a few months later I saw a little fawn stumbling along behind her.”
Unlike many photographers, Kirk – who is a college director of teaching, learning and assessment – has chosen not to specialise in one area; he’s too busy soaking up everything he sees. So he’s photographed comical squirrels and kingfishers, the moon and stars, venturing out in the dark to take his first astrophoto of comet Neowise, seeking out landscapes that move him, and spending hours and hours working towards getting a good picture.
“My idea of fun, at the grand old age of 37, is to walk around fields, and go out with the dogs and my camera. I get my pleasure from going out when no one else is around and going to places that are full of animals and just see what’s going on,” he says.
I think the wonderful thing about photography is... it’s given me an eye for what’s around me, and an insight into my surroundings in a way I’ve never had before. Kirk Purnell
When he got his first ever glimpse of a barn owl as he drove across the moors one morning, he became fascinated by it, repeatedly returning to the same spot asking other people if they’d seen it fly and when; watching, waiting, until his persistence paid off.
“After two weeks I finally saw him at the right time, close enough, with the right lens, and I got my photo,” he says. “It’s one of my favourites, not because of the photo, but because of the experience that led me to taking that photo. I learned so much about barn owls; I learned so much about this one in particular, I talked to a lot of people and I learned so much about the area. Finally getting the shot is the culmination of all that.
“I can’t even tell you how excited I was about that photo, the glee on my face when I was taking it home to show my wife, who’d watched me go out looking for the owl twice a day, every day, for the last fortnight – I was absolutely over the moon.
“Owls are the most incredible creatures, they’re so silent and so poised. I see the same one quite a lot now; this particular owl comes so close to you at night and is so comfortable in your presence, like the deer is. I’ve got quite a few animals that I visit regularly; there’s a buzzard and a kestrel pair that I see a lot. When you’re going and seeing the same animal over and over again you get to know them, you know their spots, and you know their behaviours, you know where they like to hunt. It’s amazing.”
The amount Kirk has learned in nine months is impressive. When he first started out, he asked a Facebook group to help him identify a bird he’d taken a picture of. It turned out to be a common house sparrow. But today he can pick out a woodpecker’s sharp chirp or a song thrush’s melody, tell the difference between birds of prey in flight, and even have an idea when the weather conditions might be right for a good sunrise the following day.
There are a multitude of things Kirk loves about photography, not just how much more connected with the natural world he feels, but also his growing love of editing pictures, creating the story he wants to tell from the freeze frame of something he’s seen.
He also loves that he has, in some way, followed in his late father’s footsteps. His dad Jeff was also a keen photographer, who specialised in portraiture, and filled the farmhouse with pictures of his wife, Kirk’s mother. He was inordinately proud of Kirk’s eye for photography and got an Instagram account so he could be in Wales and see his son’s pictures of Somerset every day.
As well as strengthening ties with his dad, Kirk’s hobby has also given him some wonderful bonding time with his baby daughter, Cece, who is seven months old.
“I used to take her out when she needed a nap,” he says. “I’d pop her in the carrier, facing me, and go for walk. She’d be cwtched into my chest in her little sling and she’d just sleep away, it was as sweet as anything.
“Now she doesn’t sleep as much, but that’s also nice because I like taking her out and letting her see, and hear, and feel the sounds and sights of the country. She’s a lot more engaged in the world.
“We walk around and we see little swans sleeping with their cygnets on the track we walk along, and she sees a lot more of what’s going on. She’s not going to remember all of this stuff, but I want her to be immersed in it. It’s one of my favourite things,” Kirk says. “I think the wonderful thing about photography is actually the 95 per cent of it that isn’t about pushing the camera button. It’s given me an eye for what’s around me, and an insight into my surroundings in a way I’ve never had before.
“I’ve learned an immense amount about the birds and the rest of the wildlife; things I’ve never seen before, like water voles and mink, and otters and deer, which have always been around me but because I’ve never been really looking, I’ve not seen it. My eyes are on stalks at the moment.
“I think it’s unbelievable the change that having a camera has had on me. I feel a thousand times more in tune with what’s around me, whether that’s wildlife, or nature, or the weather.
“If you’d have asked me three years ago, I’d have described myself as a city boy – I lived in Bristol and I absolutely loved all the pubs and the bars, and the hustle and bustle. Now this is my slice of heaven, I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. The camera opened my eyes to everything.”