Monday, February 25, 2008

Playschool wildlife photography

You know - through the window! Ok that will sort any readers by age into those who get it and those who who think I'm barking mad.

But the weather this weekend was truly crap. Brief flashes of almost daylight flickered through the dismal cloud cover. Sunday was meant to be brighter - cobblers. And to cap it all I was on-call so a mission after the FoD boars was out of the question as the mobile doesn't work there.
So I was left occasionally grabbing a camera if I happened to be adjacent to a window where something was happening. Did remind me it might be time to clean the windows again.

Our brambling was back, albeit a bit nervously and briefly. This was a garden first for us, but where our feeders are was not designed for succesful photography - unless you count upstairs bedroom windows at some distance.

The blackcaps were back (we have 2 males and 2 females coming daily) and almost too close to the the window for the lens I had on, as these uncropped shots show.
Losing the converter didn't help as we went into what seemed like a solar eclipse
As you can see they still like sultanas, but most recently have also started nicking the cheese we put out for the robin (he comes in the back door looking for it). Amazingly the highly insectivorous wagtails have moved on from pastry and are also eating cheese. So is one of the dunnocks.
It makes you realise how much birds adapt in winter. At Old Moor the long tailed tits were ground feeding - something I'd never seen before.
Mind you it looks more like it's playing 'Pope' than feeding.

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