Bumble Bees on Flowers

A quick post of a couple of shots I did in the garden recently.

Juvenile Buzzards

The Buzzards in my garden have bred and the two noisy youngsters have now discovered the food I put out for the adults. I popped into the hide this afternoon to photograph one of them.

Buzzard Close-ups

A quick session in the garden yesterday with the Buzzards. When I do one of these sessions I have to decide which lens to use - whether I want the whole bird in the frame or just part of it, I opted for the latter this time for some moody, full frame close-ups with a nice dark, shaded background.

Purple Sandpipers

More waders from the Uists. The Purple Sandpiper is another species that over-winters, with its purple plumage, here on The Wirral. These shots show it's contrasting spring colours. I have added an image of a winter bird for comparison.

I have added 42 new Purple Sandpiper images to my main site - Steven Round Bird Photography.com

Skomer Puffins

I made a trip to the island of Skomer, off the Pembrokeshire coast in south Wales last week. It was getting a little late in the season but I knew there were still plenty of Puffins there. They are a couple of weeks later than usual with breeding and are still feeding young in the burrows.

Arriving on the island before lunchtime, it wasn't going to be the best time for photography in the scorching overhead sun. I tried a few flight shots but the heat distortion didn't help in trying to get sharp images,  so close-ups would be the order of the day.

Ringed Plovers

More images from the Outer Hebrides. I spent a considerable part of my trip photographing waders. I was keen to get a good number of shots of them in breeding plumage, a complete contrast to the overwintering birds we have here locally on the Wirral. The other reason is that they are very approachable. Once you have settled down they will literally run around within a couple of meters, oblivious to your presence.

Ringed Plovers do breed locally to the Wirral, so I wasn't intending to take many shots of these. The white sandy beaches made for some nice low level shots though.

Lapwings

With such a prolonged cold winter, everything is very late this year by several weeks. So, I was surprised to see that this hadn't affected the Lapwings on The Outer Hebrides. Most of them had bred and had numbers of chicks running around. It's amazing how independent these chicks are as they wander well away from their parents, who do a great job of guarding them. Any potential predator is quickly spotted and relentlessly chased away. The iridescent colours on the adults are stunning at this time of year.