His vision is channelled down the barrel of the 400mm lens that seems to be growing out of his eye socket. As he cradles the camera body in one hand and gently twists the focus ring in the other, Raschke holds his breath.   

The wind that has been ruffling the trees suddenly lightens, as if Mother Nature is holding her breath as well. The sounds of the bush and the anticipation press down on the water.

The world is waiting.    

Then, with the softest push on the shutter button, Raschke ensnares a moment.

“Got him!,” he murmurs.

Nick Raschke has just photographed an intermediate egret dipping its head into the water below Barnsley weir, on Cockle Creek.

Both the photographer and the subject have been exercising patience. The bird has been standing at the end of a pipe, waiting to catch a fish. And Raschke has been sitting in his kayak, waiting for the egret to catch a fish. Man and bird have both seized what they were waiting for. 

“Dear little bloke,” says Raschke, as he watches the egret. “Just trying to make a living. It’s a smart spot to get a feed.”

As Raschke knows, it’s also a good spot to get a beautiful bird shot. He has paddled Cockle Creek dozens of times, and this is but one Hunter waterway he has explored. 

At least three times a week, he heads out on Lake Macquarie or along local creeks and rivers to exercise two of his entwined passions. 

“The photography drives the kayaking,” he explains. “And the kayaking drives the photography.” 

OFF the water, the observer is usually the observed. And the man who glides quietly through the environment is revered for creating melodic noise.

Nick Raschke is a superb guitarist. The 51-year-old has been turning heads and grabbing ears since he was a teenager, no matter if he has been playing solo acoustic guitar or taking the lead in rock bands.

If photography is about trapping light in a box, Raschke’s style of guitar playing is the sonic equivalent of catching lightning in a bottle.

Yet the man who has been in the spotlight on stage for decades loves to lose himself in the wild, barely noticed and unheard.

“Rock and roll is all about people,” he says. “As much as I love people, it’s nice to do something that doesn’t involve them.”

Since he was a young man, Raschke sought moments of silence through bushwalking and rock-climbing.

 About three years ago, a friend lent him a camera to use while hiking. Around the same time, another friend encouraged him to try kayaking.

Raschke took to the water, and he embraced photography.

He became a man of sound and vision. 

IN the eyes of most people, Cockle Creek is not the prettiest waterway in the Hunter. For decades, it was treated as little more than an industrial discharge channel, and long stretches of its banks remain neglected and unloved.

Yet in the eyes of a bird photographer, Cockle Creek is a wonderland . 

“From a bird point of view, it would have to be Cockle Creek,” Raschke says, when asked about his favourite places to paddle. 

“I know their territories. I know which one is about to come up.”

Nick, who is a paddling buddy (and a friend off the water), wants to introduce me to his avian mates along the creek.

We set off from near the creek mouth, where it flows past picnickers at Speers Point into Lake Macquarie.

When he began kayaking, Raschke explains, he took a camera with him. Basically, he photographed anything he saw, “and slowly it became birds”.

He knew little about birds, but peering through the viewfinder encouraged him to focus on what was perched before him, or what flashed by. 

“I always say ignorance is a good basis for observation,” he says. 

From observation came knowledge. When Raschke photographed a bird, he would then consult a book, go online or chat to bird-watching enthusiasts, to learn about what he had snapped. 

From knowledge came care. He talks about each and every bird with affection, as though he knows them personally. And, in a way, he does. 

“Beautiful little thing,” he says of an egret we pass just upstream from the railway bridge. “He’s always there.”

He marks the junction of Cockle and Brush creeks not by geography but by another bird: “A black bittern lives around here. A spooky, cool bird. Beautiful. I’ve photographed it only once.”

“See up there!,” he exclaims, pointing at a tree, as a mass of small grey and white birds flies off. “Woodswallows! They’re just the neatest. They’re like little Mafia guys, so well dressed!”

As he talks, he lifts the camera, composes and clicks. Raschke doesn’t hold down the button; he has no interest in blasting off multiple shots in a burst: “I don’t have the patience to go through 1000 photos.”

Raschke is underplaying his skill and qualities as a photographer. He does have the patience in the field to look for a shot, to carefully frame it, and to capture it, in the process realising something beautiful. For his pictures are not only gorgeous to look at, they also convey the character of the bird.

A Nick Raschke photo of a bird is a compelling portrait. It is why his Facebook page, where he posts many of his images, is so popular. 

“I’m looking for a glint in the eye,” the photographer says. 

“If you’re a lead guitarist, you think in milliseconds. In lead guitar playing, you’re reacting to the moment. With photography, you’re doing the same.”

More than trying to catch time, Raschke is doing it from the confined space of a kayak, which can rock and twist, according to what the weather and the wakes of power boats may throw at it. Which is why he seeks calm water for his wildlife photography.

“It’s not easy,” he says. “You’re on a moving platform, capturing a moving thing. It’s a challenge.”

However, Raschke reckons the kayak is the ideal platform for photographing and, more importantly, getting to know birds.  

“If you turn up [any other way], and you lift up your camera, 98 per cent of birds go away,” he says.

“But when you’re in a kayak, the birds’ attitude is, ‘What is this coming at me?’. They don’t recognise me as a human. Kayaks don’t scare them.”

As we slide under a large gum arcing over the creek, Raschke says, “There’s a bellbird colony in this tree.”

He recounts how he once saw a gang of bellbirds harassing an eastern red rosella around here, and he feared for its life. While he is here to observe and photograph nature, Raschke cannot always be a passive observer. 

“I wasn’t here to watch him suffer,” he says of the rosella under attack. “I clapped my hands to scare them off.”

But sometimes he can’t protect the birds from the most selfish and vicious animal of them all. Humans. 

Raschke is still seething and sad from an incident the week before. He saw a cormorant hanging from a tree branch over the creek. He paddled over in the hope of saving it. He was too late. The bird’s neck was tightly wrapped in fishing line, which had snagged on the branch. He cut the cormorant down and placed it in nearby mangroves. 

“The poor little bird, it probably had a nest, it’s probably got babies wondering where Dad is,” he says, shaking his head. 

Raschke’s sympathy for the bird is matched by his anger at the behaviour of some fishermen.

“I wish a fishing hook cost $20, so they’d spend more time retrieving lost gear,” he says, adding that if he can collect abandoned lines and hooks from his kayak, then a fisherman can easily do the same from the shore or a boat.

As he paddles, Raschke criss-crosses the creek, collecting rubbish, ranging from a thick rope floating just below the surface to plastic bottles and bags: “That’s one less piece of crap in a turtle’s belly or a bird’s belly.” 

Yet no matter how much he collects, there’s always more. He sees rubbish every time he frames a photo.  About half of his shots, he estimates, have rubbish somewhere in the background. Raschke tries to crop the junk out, for what degrades the environment also ruins a photo. 

“Being a would-be eco-warrior, I should leave it in,” he says. 

Once we reach the weir near Barnsley, we turn and paddle back down the creek. As we curve around a bend, we see an osprey plummet into the water to catch a fish. The bird soars to a high branch in a tree by the creek to devour its meal. 

“That’s a magic moment,” Raschke mutters. 

But he hasn’t caught it on camera. He shrugs. I assure Nick that a picture is not worth as much as a memory, before asking does he always kayak with his camera. 

“Always,” he replies. “Once I went out without my camera, on Throsby Creek. I came across this mudbank with two plovers standing on it, along with their three chicks, these little fluffy balls. That was the universe telling me to take a camera!”

Suddenly the osprey swoops again towards the water. Raschke scoops up his camera. He has it to his eye just as the bird nears the creek’s surface. 

Click.

The bird returns to the tree with its next course. And a smile of satisfaction returns to Nick Raschke’s face.

His eyes crinkle in delight, as he glances at the shot then looks at the water sparkling in the afternoon light.

He murmurs just one word.  

“Magic.”