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

Photo of the Day - Fluffed Up Blue Tit

Today's photo is a fluffed up Blue Tit on a Larch cone, taken in my garden a few years ago.

A Variety of Images

At this time of year I have many plans for photographic projects. The success of them is usually determined by the weather, which up to now, has been pretty poor. Hopefully spring will soon be here. This post is a small assortment of some of the photographs I have managed to take in the last month or so.

Blue Tit

Bullfinch

Goldfinch

Great Crested Grebe (courtship display)

Great Crested Grebe

Kestrel

Lesser Redpoll

Garden Birds

A few images of garden birds taken in the spring.

Blue Tit

Blue Tit

Coal Tit

Great-spotted Woodpecker

Great Tit

Robin

Blue Tits in Flight

I was visiting a nature reserve earlier this week and having been walking around all morning, I decided to have my lunch by the bird feeding station. The birds were using the same flight path to the feeders each time, so I thought I could maybe try for some flight shots. I put on a 300mm lens, set the camera to manual focus and aimed just below the feeders. With my sandwich in one hand and camera in the other, every time a bird approached I took a couple of shots. A few of them have actually turned out ok.

Blue Tit

Great Tit

Garden Birds

I have been concentrating on garden birds over the last week, I didn't really photograph any last year and there is always a demand for these type of images. With the sun getting a little higher each day I am now able to have some reasonable sessions in the garden.

Blue Tit

Great Tit

Long-tailed Tit

Nuthatch

Bullfinch

Robin

Up Close and Personal

I thought I would do something a little different for this post. - A collection of close-up headshots of garden birds.
You can see how the face feathers differ between the species, the Nuthatch and particularly the Dunnock having quite course plumage, whereas the smaller Long-tailed Tit has very fine feathers.

Long-tailed Tit

Nuthatch

Robin

Blue Tit

Bullfinch

Coal Tit

Dunnock

Great Tit

Woodland Birds

Well! In the last seven days here in the Lovely North West of England we have had about three hours of sunshine.  I was ready for it though with my hide set up in the garden and made the most of every minute.

Here are some of the results with a few from other recent sessions thrown in. I'm actually starting to make inroads into my huge backlog of images, although I'd rather be out with the camera.

Blue Tit

 Blue Tit

Tree Sparrow

Bullfinch

Bullfinch

Long-tailed Tit

Coal Tit

Great Tit