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

Siskins

I am always discovering unused images tucked away on my hard drives that I didn't realise I had. I don't think I will ever catch up with the backlog. These Siskin images are a typical example, A file of over 400 of them taken back in 2008.

Ringed Plovers

With the strong winds at the moment I have been spending some time on the coast, hoping for the opportunity to photograph some of the seabirds that get blown in at this time of year. Up to now the winds have been too south-westerly with little coming into photographic range, so I have been photographing the waders and gulls that are building up along the shoreline. There are a lot of Ringed Plover at the moment with many juveniles. One of the adults I photographed has a ring on it's leg that's from Norway.

 

Welsh Stonechats

A sunny forecast, so a very early start this morning and I was deep in the Welsh countryside taking photographs by 05:30. I have a number of places that I annually visit in North Wales at this time of year for localised species. With the poor weather over the last couple of weeks I had a bit of catching up to do, I knew that spring was moving on and birds would be feeding their young, you suddenly realise that it is nearly summer and could have missed so much. Even with this in mind, I was slightly surprised to see a family of young Stonechats, they were feeding themselves and were very advanced. I was comparing this to my nestboxes back home where none of the Blue or Great Tits have fledged yet.
I didn't see an adult female Stonechat and had the feeling that she might already be on her second brood, as the male was singing for most of the time I was there.

Juveniles

Male

Female, taken earlier in the year

Young Swallows

Back in July I spent quite a bit of time photographing Swallows.  My main aim was to try and get shots of the young being fed, they sit on the fences and wait for the adults to come with insects, the tricky bit is that the adults don't actually land, they hover and push the food into the young birds mouths, this all happens within a couple of seconds so catching this on camera is quite a challenge.

Young Jays

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been trying to photograph the young Jays in my garden. It has been quite a job as they seem to prefer to hang off the fatball feeders than go for the easier photogenic option of peanuts on a log, paired with the poor weather over the last month, getting them in the right spot with the sun out hasn't been easy. One plus point is that they seem slow to mature and still look like juveniles.

Here's some of the best shots so far starting off with an adult for comparison.

Dippers

One of the main problems with photographing Dippers is that their habitat along rivers is usually very shaded by trees, so ideally you need as much sunlight as possible, even then it is quite a challenge to get the exposure right, with their dark brown backs and white breasts.

I had hoped to get shots of the newly fledged youngsters being fed by their parents on the river, but thanks to the typical British weather I only managed to photograph the adults collecting grubs for the chicks in the nest, then after several cloudy days I returned to find there wasn't a Dipper to be seen. I tried another location and found that the young birds there were very independent and feeding on their own. I am pleased with the results though and hope for better weather next year.    

Avocets

I have made few trips to photograph Avocets recently.  I had some specific shots in mind that I wanted, the first being of the young feeding, which worked out quite well. The other was some nice portrait shots of an adult with a reflection, this didn't go quite to plan, as is usually the case, typically when the chance came to get something near, the only cloud in the sky went in front of the sun!

It amuses me that the adults attack any other birds that come near, no matter how large they are, such as Geese and Herons, I have even seen them chase a Hen Harrier away.  It seems that they become so obsessed with this defensive behaviour that they actually forget about their independent but vulnerable chicks which have wandered off to feed, sometimes up to 20 or 30m away from the parents.