Payments
Payment of Hides and supervised sessions is to be made at time of booking. If payment is not made at the time of booking, a reservation will be held for five days. If payment is not received within those five days, your reservation will be open to other bookings.
Refunds
No refunds will be given if a cancellation is made within 30 days of your date booked.
Rearrangement of dates: if you need to rearrange a pre-booked date, please be aware the main season gets very busy, normally March to November. David Plummer will endeavour to rearrange but if it is not possible and if within 30 days of the date, no refunds will be given. Occasionally when it is impossible to rearrange a date, you will be allowed to rearrange for the following season.
Arrival times
If you are late for to be placed in a hide, and other people are waiting you may unfortunately be placed at the end of the queue which may mean a delay in your getting into the hide.
Medical & Mobility
Please declare any medical conditions or mobility issues which may affect your health and safety within the hide Or indeed getting to or from the hide. You may be asked to sign an important consent form as well as a risk assessment form.
Equipment
Comprehensive information is e-mailed to you prior to your event, listing equipment required. If you arrive for a Kingfisher or little owl shoot, for example, without a tripod you will not be allowed in the hide. Poor fieldwork and hide discipline can make wildlife very nervous which will not only ruin your session but the whole hide setup in general. Tripods are available for hire from David Plummer on prior booking.
House keeping
The wildlife comes first: if very poor hide discipline or inappropriate behaviour disturbs wildlife to a detrimental extent, David Plummer reserves the right to remove you from the hide.
The hides are not available for hire to individuals wishing to teach photography other than David Plummer.
In the event of the hide not working
Occasionally with this sort of hide setup, for no predictable reason, the birds just stop coming in. This could be because, in the case of kingfishers for example, the female bird is incubating and all of a sudden stops coming to her favourite perch. However, as soon as the eggs hatch you can normally rely on her coming many, many times In 2016 we had a case of mink predation on the Kingfisher nest which resulted in a prolonged absence of kingfishers.
David Plummer will never bring anyone to a hide, when it is thought they have little chance of getting a target species, therefore, in the event of the hide ceasing to work, your session will be rearranged to a mutually agreeable date. Hopefully this will not be for long. Please note, refunds will not be given under this circumstance as it could just be a temporary change in the bird’s behaviour which may soon resume. Ideally you will be given advance warning of the chance of this. However, you may be informed of this the evening before your event based on the previous day’s shoot, so please ensure you have provided a means of contact you at short notice. If agreeable and available, alternative hides and species can be offered.
If you decide to take a chance, and go ahead with your session and unfortunately do not get your target species, you will not be given an alternative session to return as you would have been informed of the risk. In some weather situations, such as during Met Office weather warnings for wind, obviously safety is an issue. In these situations, your hide session is subject to reschedule. This situation is normally mutually agreeable, however, if customer safety is at risk, David Plummer may decide to reschedule your session at short notice.