Roamer column: Wishing all our feathered friends a very berry Christmas

He introduced the ‘ringing’ of robins’ legs in 1922, enabling the identification and observation of individual birds in the wild. It’s thought that one of his ringed birds was the oldest known, living, European robin in the world at the time.

It was a female, ringed near Enniskillen on 18 December 1927 and discovered again, near Ballinamallard, on 14 July 1938, making it at least 11 years old, unique in its day.

Like tinselled trees, choirs of angels and starry-skied snow scenes, the little birds that Burkitt knew so well and loved so much return every December on unquantifiable numbers of Christmas cards, festive wrapping paper, woolly jumpers and all over the internet.

I’ve always presumed that robins ruled their Yuletide roost until two other spectacularly festive birds alighted on my computer screen recently, each with a merry message.

Perched on sprigs of holly laden with succulent, deep-red berries, one is a magnificent multi-coloured Goldfinch - brown, red, black, white and yellow - the other, a more unpretentious Coal Tit with a distinctive grey back, white shoulder-patch and black cap.

The Coal Tit’s photo is captioned ‘Tis the Season to be Holly’ and the Goldfinch comes with a tongue-in-beak festive exclamation ‘It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...’

The festive portraits of two of his many feathered friends are by Dromara photographer Terry Hanna. The retired IT lecturer has hundreds of thousands of photographs of all sorts of subjects and topics, from birds and rock bands to sport, landscapes, concerts and insects.

Terry agreed to meet me in Hillsborough Forest Park, much celebrated by bird-watchers, nature-lovers and photographers for its lakes, trees and abundant wild life. He brought George, his brown (officially ‘liver-brown’) and bouncy Cocker Spaniel so we were greeted with a collective scolding from the lake’s sizable community of swans, geese and ducks.

A traditionalist at heart, Roamer wanted advice on photographing robins and scanned the trees and undergrowth while attempting to keep pace with George. “There’s a heron,” said Terry, pausing to train his camera and extremely substantial lens across the lake.

Before I’d seen anything among the trees and lakeside thicket Terry showed me the magnificent grey bird on his camera’s display screen - sleek and motionless on the shore, its large, pointed beak poised for a passing fish. And a low-slung cormorant sculled across the picture, two in one, perfectly framed by lake and trees.

Suddenly, a flutter in the shadows of a low bush beside us hailed a dark little silhouette flitting from the ground onto a branch. Terry turned his camera towards the action - a robin - captured instantly on his display screen, with a cheeky jet-black eye cocked sideways, contrasting with its iconic orange-red breast.

For anyone wanting the perfect photograph of a Christmas robin, how does he do it? “If you can get to eye level or thereabouts with your subject matter,” Terry explained, “then the people seeing the photograph will feel a lot more involved.”

And not only for birds but for foxes, insects, children, rugby scrummages, even wild flowers...and of course George! “Whatever it happens to be,” he continued, “view it face on, with the camera pretty much horizontal.”

He often “hunkers down” so that he’s not standing, which decreases the angle of the camera, and he “has been known to actually fall prone so that the camera is exactly at the same level as the bird’s eyes, and that conveys a feeling of intimacy.”

Terry is President of the Ballynahinch Camera Club and his work is credited by the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain, so how did he shoot his seasonal shots of the Goldfinch and Coal Tit? (His answer could save you a fortune on Christmas cards!)

“I found a particularly beautiful holly bush absolutely covered in the fattest red berries I’ve ever seen,” Terry admitted “so I cut off a few twigs with pruning shears. It’s what we call a ‘set-up’! Birds will come to a feeder, so if you put something attractive for them to land on adjacent to it they’ll land on that!”