Sometimes in wildlife photography you make your own luck and sometimes you just get lucky but the more time you spend in the field the more chances you have of getting that special bit of luck. My photography is mainly ad hoc stuff with little advanced planning unless it is for something special or a planned trip but I am always on the look out for anything to aim the camera at but there are times when you are just not prepared for what happens. On this May day I had been in the forest since first light walking a lot of miles doing a breeding bird survey for an atlas project and by midday I was tired of carrying the camera around with nothing to show for the effort. Sitting down on the back of my vehicle having a welcome lunch the camera and lens were on the back seat well out of hand’s reach. At this point I suddenly noticed a movement in the grass to my right and a Polecat came out carrying a young Rabbit! It was early afternoon on a sunny day and this was to say the least unexpected but as it ran off down the road I was left tumbling over trying to get to my camera but to no avail it ran with amazing speed considering what it was carrying and disappeared into the plantation about 300m away. I was left cursing myself for not having the camera at hand and returned to peeling my orange when amazingly it reappeared and shot back into the heather and grass about 30m from my vehicle. It seemed likely it would come back by the same route so I sat motionless for 20 minutes and then it came back out carrying another young Rabbit and set off down the road; I had to make a quick squeak which did the trick as it stopped, turned and dropped the Rabbit while it looked at me for a few seconds before picking the Rabbit up and making off again. This time I got off a few shots and was able to smile. The chances of that encounter were surely millions to one but in that spring I probably spent over 500 hours in the forest surveying so at least I was in with a chance!

Canon 1D4 with Canon 300 2.8 lens

1/1600th second at f5 and ISO400