Welcome to graybirds.net

This site is dedicated to the sharing of the beauty of the natural world with all of you out there. Birdwatching and bird photography are my hobbies, some might say my passion and the less charitable my obsession. My interests extend beyond birds to wildlife in general and most recently I have taken to macro-photography of insects. I hope that you get as much enjoyment from viewing my images of birds and other fauna from the localities that I have visited as I have from being there and taking the photos.

I am a retired geologist now living in my native England, who lived, worked and travelled for almost 40 years in Africa. The images on this site were originally from southern and south-central African localities, Kenya & Tanzania in east Africa and Guinea in west Africa. These have been added to as my travels have taken me to localities in Europe, Central and South America, Singapore and Malaysia.

I am not a photographer. It is neither intended that the images on this site are book illustration quality, although a few have been published in some southern African bird guides, nor that they are even superb photographs. They merely represent my photographic record of the birds and other animals that I have seen. In some instances they are merely ‘good ID shots’. They will be added to as I photograph new species, or replaced as I obtain better quality photos of those already seen. Please visit the site regularly so that you can see the latest images.

For those that are interested in the technical side of the bird photography, many of the older images were captured using a Canon 20D or 40D with a Canon EF 100–400mm F4.5-5.6L IS USM lens, usually close to full zoom, then a Canon 60D or Canon 1D Mk II, and now a (trusty old) Canon 1D Mk IV with an EF 300mm f2.8 L IS USM lens with or without a 2x extender. The vast majority were also taken hand-held with the camera set to Auto and image stabilisation on as they were shot through the open window of a vehicle or while walking in the bush, with no time to fiddle around with camera settings (and at my age I’d have had to take out my reading glasses to actually see that sort of detail on the camera!). A few were even taken with a pocket Canon PowerShot SX270. More recently the insect macro shots were taken with the Canon 1D Mk IV fitted with a Canon EF 50mm F1.4 lens and extension tubes.

Neil Gray

Total bird species on this website as at 31 October 2024 = 1,870 in 3,621 images.

[Note: All English and scientific names follow the IOC World Bird List, ver. 14.2]