Odds and Ends

A few more shots from the weekend. The Lapwing fought over food during the freeze, life was very competitive. I think the beneficiaries were the Raptors with the amount of Lapwing, Thrushes and Golden Plover around, the Buzzard was diving on the Lapwing. I have been using the Nikon 300mm F2.8 Lens without the teleconverter and with the aperature wide open at f2.8. When shooting with the sun behind me I usually adjust the exposure compensation to -0,7 to -1.0. Please click on the image to enlarge

Glaucous, a Garden Tick

We had the Glaucous Gull on the roof today and a Mistle Thrush in the garden so two new garden ticks today.

Field Fare festival

Today was interesting, the garden was full of birds all struggling to survive the arctic weather. We had 12 Field Fares competing for the food. The Cotoneaster was the attraction with all of the FF' feeding continuously on the berries. I had a photo festival with this species today and I am pleased with the shots. Plenty of success in amongst the 320 images I captured. One good thing I did a few days earlier was to prune the Cotoneaster on the public foot path side and scattered the berry laden cuttings around the garden. The garden looked untidy as hell but who cares, it paid dividends and feeds the birds. I also hunted out a few hibernating snails and they where very much appreciated by the Song Thrush. We also went out to Bottallack and was amazed at the numbers of Redwing, Field Fare, Golden Plover and Lapwing sheltering on the cliffs witnessing a constant movement of birds. we flushed a Woodcock and saw a Raven with a snipe in its beak, I guess the snipe had succumbed in the cold weather and I suspect that this extreme weather will have a massive impact on the bird population on the whole so keep feeding in your gardens. We also noted Redwing in flying off the sea from some distance. As previously mentioned I took a high number of photographs today and i will post them over the next couple of days.

I don't normally list but today Lisa and I decided to list the garden species and they are 12 Field Fare, 6 Redwing, 2 Meadow Pipits, 4+ Blackbirds, 3 Songthrush, 1 Male Black Cap, 2 Robin, 2 Dunnock, 5 Blue Tits, 4 Great Tits, 2 Wren, Chaffinch (numerous), 11 House Sparrow, 1 Pied Wagtail, 3 Collared Doves, 1 Rook ,1 GS Woodpecker, 3 Starlings,. A flock of Snipe over, Lapwing over and 1 Peregrine over. Please click on the images to enlarge

A Room With A View

Lisa had a few hours watching the garden and the field behind us today and came up with a Glaucous Gull ( 1st winter) and Snipe in the field viewed from the bedroom window and the Field Fare from the Kitchen.