Snow Bunting

We have had a few Snow Buntings in the coast locally for the last month or two. A group of five at one location and a single bird at another. I decided to go and have a look at the lone bird as it would be in better light. I arrived and could immediately see it perched on top of the rocks in some lovely late afternoon light. A few shots and 15 minutes later it flew high into the sky and disappeared into the distance. It has returned in the days since so I think it probably goes elsewhere to roost.

It has been some time since I photographed one of these lovely approachable birds. I'll maybe go and check out the group of five before winter is over.

More Garden Birds

 As the light improves and with a good deal of sunshine I have been making the most of it with more photography in the garden, here's a few more from the last couple of days.

Blackcap (female)

Common Buzzard

Goldfinch

Goldfinch

Greenfinch (male)

Nuthatch

Nuthatch

Garden Birds

 Nice to have some sunshine and be able to start this years garden photography this week. Here are some of the results.

Blue Tit

Goldcrest

Jay

Robin

Robin

Song Thrushes

 Here are a few of the Song Thrush images that I am working through at the moment. I have always struggled to get many shots of this species, so it is good to have achieved this over the past couple of years. There will be quite a number of new ones added to my Website over the next week or so.

Shovelers

Having just added 61 new Shoveler images to my website, I thought I would post a few of them here. I will be doing regular blog posts now with current images and also as I work through and add older ones.

Garden Foxes (2)

Part 2 of my series of the Fox family currently in our garden. Originally we thought there were only three cubs, but one evening there were four on the lawn, accompanied by Basil. They were very excited, chasing each other around and play fighting. We have always fed Basil our food scraps which are mainly chicken leftovers and bones. I also put out peanuts which the Foxes and Hedgehogs like. But I decided it would be a good idea to get some dog biscuits, which the cubs soon discovered.

I am able to sit or lie on the floor to take the photographs without a hide, which makes things a bit easier, although at the early stages, any movement and they would be off, especially when they started coming up on their own.

Garden Foxes

Just over a year ago a very tame dog Fox started appearing around our garden. He was obviously very used to humans, as he would just sit or lie around the garden, not bothered by us at all.

My wife named him Basil and since then he has become part of the family. During last April it was obvious he was feeding a family of cubs, as he would take any food we gave him off into the woods. We hoped to see his cubs, but it was much later in June and July that we saw some almost fully grown, shy cubs.

This year in March he would take the food off again into the woodland and we soon realised that the den was very close to the house, much closer than we had thought. When April came we could hear what were obviously cubs making little squeaks and yelps. We eventually got a glimpse of three very small cubs playing with Basil in the undergrowth. A week later and they appeared on the lawn and the story goes on. I will do a series of blog posts as the cubs grow and mature. This one is just about Basil though.

 

It's hard work feeding those cubs and he gets very tired. Trying to find a bit of peace and quiet for a quick snooze.