Corn Buntings

A few shots of Corn Buntings, taken last year in Spain. They were a very common bird where we were and as you can see they loved to pose.

More on my new website: Steven Round Bird Photography

Common Sandpipers and a New Website

It's been a few months since I posted here, I have been very busy building a new website. I built my old site back in 2003, it has been updated and tweaked over the years, but basically it was the same site I started with. I had noticed that my page views had dropped from around 850 a day to about 150, my rankings on Google had also dropped from top of the first page... something to do with Google algorithms. Basically it's outdated and not Google or mobile friendly.
So having been putting it of for some years, I got stuck in and built a new one. All new images will be larger and it will be a much quicker process of adding them. I'm hoping to make a big impact on my backlog of images over the next 12 months.

I have started to add new images and some of the first have been Common Sandpipers. These were taken in Spain in 2017. Here are a few of them.

The link to my new website: https://www.stevenround-birdphotography.co.uk/

Little Ringed Plovers

A selection of Little Ringed plover images, taken in Spain over the last few years. Being a schedule one bird, a licence would be required to photograph these near a nest in the breeding season here in the UK. This isn't necessary in Spain, making photographing them a lot easier.

Manx Shearwaters

Back in July a group of us went about 25 miles out on a boat into Liverpool Bay. This has become a twice annual event where we photograph seabirds. The usual star of the show is the Gannet, but this year they were few and far between. General thoughts were that this was due to the hot weather, which may have affected their breeding. Fortunately we had a number of Manx Shearwaters that put on a good display which gave us the opportunity for some good shots.
More on my website - stevenround-birdphotography.com

In the Garden

In my garden I have 5 nest boxes that were all successfully used by Blue Tits. Consequently the garden is now full of the sounds of chirping juveniles, along with a good number of young Great Tits. As they aren't cute for long I decided I needed to get some shots, quite easy really as they are queuing up at the many feeders I have around the place. Getting the right pose is the tricky bit, as they don't keep still for more than a split second. Anyway I managed to get some decent images along with a few other species, although with the camera and lens set up I had, some of the species were a bit on the large size to fit in frame. I had to do a few head and arty images just so I could get the shots.

Juvenile Blue Tit

Juvenile Great Tit

Male Bullfinch

Female Bullfinch

Female Blackbird

Male Great-spotted Woodpecker

Stock Dove

Magpie

Juvenile Magpie

Azure-winged Magpies

Another species from our trip to Extremadura last year is the Azure-winged Magpie. A really smart looking bird that I had been hoping to get some good shots of. When we arrived at the hide it was very gloomy and raining, the first shots taken were not very good at all. Fortunately after an hour or two it started to brighten and the shots improved. Eventually having full sun on them.

Like our Magpies at home they are quite difficult to compose in the frame, their tails always being a problem and to have the whole bird in the frame makes them quite small on these web images, so I did a few close ups of head and shoulders so you can see how smart these birds are. There are more on my website.

Hoopoes

Back to my trip to Extremadura, Spain last April for Hoopoes. Always a nice bird to photograph, although we were quite limited with the variety of shots we could get from the hide, with one perch near the nest. Luckily they did venture on to the grass below.