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

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

Young Birds

My feeding stations become very busy at this time of year, mainly with newly fledged youngsters. The adults keep a low profile as they start to moult and aren't very photogenic anyway, with missing and worn feathers from their hard work over the last few months.

They seem to have done well this year with plenty of young Blue, Great and Coal Tits eating their way through peanuts, fatballs and sunflower hearts at a great rate of knots. The Long-tailed Tit flocks pass through regularly but haven't shown any interest in the feeders this year, not as yet anyway.

A single Great-spotted Woodpecker offspring has been attending for a couple of weeks now, and although I set up various branches and logs for it to land on, it tends to go straight on to the feeder, a bit frustrating and now it's losing it's red cap, another week or so and it will look like an adult.

Blue Tit

 Coal Tit

 Great Tit

Great-spotted Woodpecker