Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
The apparently joyous faces are at odds with the reality. Both birds want control of the perch to the peanuts out of frame to the left.
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A rabbit as you don't normally see one with the eye fully dilated - at least until just after the flashgun fired. But it stayed about for several more shots.
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Greenfinches generally win territorial disputes against robins, but being airborne gives the robin some advantage. Just about even then - both birds decide the other one should be ignored (for now).
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A Tawny Owl made a 10 minute visit to the meadow post.
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About 2 hours later a Tawny Owl (we can't see any identification differences to make us think a different individual) took this photo as it came in to land by the peanut feeder.
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There are legends about Starlings being Strawberry thieves.
This is our version - a Blackbird not stealing but accepting the offering.
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Tasty?
Grey Squirrels, along with everything else, makes the most
of the food it can find during the cold and wet of winter.
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Grey Squirrel in heaven?
Grey Squirrels, along with everything else, makes the most
of the food it can find during the cold and wet of winter.
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"How to eat from the log without getting your feet wet"
Frequent heavy rains have been flooding the feeding sites.
Grey Squirrel fur is not water resistant, so it wants the
food without soaking itself.
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A corn grain makes a whole meal for a Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse).
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The shadow was only there for 1/1000 second, but the field mouse looks like she is framing herself.
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2 Fieldmice (Wood Mice) 'Formation feeding'.
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Frequent heavy rain floods the photo sites and creates some interesting behaviour.
"What do I do about this?"
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Frequent heavy rain floods the photo sites and creates some interesting behaviour.
"Have a drink?"
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Frequent heavy rain floods the photo sites and creates some interesting behaviour.
"Try to leap over?"
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A Greenfinch arriving at the stone as smaller birds flee.
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A Greenfinch sees off a male Chaffinch.
The pecking order of our common visitors at the moment seems to be:-
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No idea where the fieldmouse (wood mouse) 'in flight' came from, where it is going, nor 'what happened next'. Genuine single frame.
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The fieldmouse (wood mouse) 'in flight' is unusually clear - here is some detail.
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A chaffinch flying by.
Note the green back you only see in flight.
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A good view of the male pheasant's leg including the conical spur they use with effect for fighting. This is what gets artificially augmented in illegal & disgusting 'cock fighting' because the bird already has an instinct to use it.
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A fox visiting the woodland site and obviously creeping up on some unsuspecting creature (until the flash fired!).
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Not many buzzards are about in the winter, but when they do appear the rooks make it feel as unwelcome as they can. Here the Rook didn't seem to be having much effect, but the buzzard did react to the Rook's claws being shown by lowering it's own in the last pair (left). Both birds were flying towards and slightly right of us, but a strong north wind meant that they actually travelled South! We had enough reference points to make an accurate montage, but the images overlapped so we have spread them out to the right.
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The beautiful white-breasted barn owl spent a few minutes hunting from the post in the meadow.
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3 days later another Barn owl visit but for only a minute two. This is probably the same bird but are not sure.
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We take berries from the autumn bushes and freeze some to give back to the wildlife in the winter. We often see gigantic rook beaks with some tiny morsel at the tip. The feathers make sense of the saying "as glossy as a raven's wing"
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An elegant male chaffinch touching down on a fir cone. An unexpectedly large proportion of landings are on these rather than the ground.
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All 3 of our 'regular' Owl species appeared in one week!
The new setup for photographing birds using the meadow post
overnight has produced this montage of a lovely Barn Owl visit.
This was over 7 minutes. We could not see the bird in the dark
except on CCTV & in these photographs.
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All 3 of our 'regular' Owl species appeared in one week!
We haven't had a sighting of the Tawny owl at the kitchen
feeder/perch for many weeks. This doesn't mean there are no
visits - just that the bird doesn't normally break the beam. We
saw this visit on the CCTV and triggered the camera remotely.
This is the only image we got - the bird seems to be staring at a
wall mounted trellis with a yet to be cut-back Virginia creeper on it.
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All 3 of our 'regular' Owl species appeared in one week!
This Little Owl appeared as a dull smudge with it's back to us in
the CCTV (eyes glow in the IR illumination when visible from the
camera - its like flashgun red-eye) but by the time we got to the
camera it was scanning the ground on the camera facing side. 3
samples here.
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A Song thrush announcing it's presence.
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The strong north wind created the fluffed up bird on the ridge. Unusually the bird took off 'with' the strong wind.
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Fieldfares are usually only momentary visitors to our feeding sites, but this one appeared about 10 times over half an hour. This is an accurate montage of three images selected and ordered for effect.
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A much closer look at the Fieldfare in the middle of the previous montage, caught in a beautiful position. Fieldfares are about the size of the Blackbird
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A really cold night (-4C) with a high humidity and slight breeze created a Hoar frost on just about everything. This Fieldfare provides some scale.
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A really cold night (-4C) with a high humidity and slight breeze created a Hoar frost on just about everything, making these Silver Birch trees silver in every way.
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A really cold night (-4C) with a high humidity and slight breeze created a Hoar frost on just about everything. A view over the field to a copse to the North East.
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We occasionally see a wonderful Bullfinch glowing in the foliage. This one was standing on this dead stem, flying off a metre or two and returning, often to exactly the same position - top and bottom left have top right between them. Bottom right was a return further down the stem.
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Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse) practicing looking twee - not that it needs to practice
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Yum - yum - yum - yum
We enjoy these 'corn kebabs' and the animals enjoy picking over
the bits we miss.
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Whee!
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Fruit is a useful sugary food for birds in the winter. The top 2 frames of this male Blackbird are in the same minute, the last looks like a return 25 minutes later for some more apple. We don't know what moved the apple.
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We first spotted this sundog from inside the woodland and wondered what it was - the sun was clouded over and we thought it was a strangely coloured sun. But it was the most intense sundog we have ever seen .
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A close-up of the sundog only taken a minute before.
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Kestrel sightings are unusual at the moment. We sometimes see a male on the 11kV wires to the North, but it usually goes west from there. We saw this one make a landing as he worked his way down the wire.
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Atypically (and for no reason we could see) he came back our way (not that close but near enough to enjoy).
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He took up hovering over a hedge to the South and worked his way further south and vanished over the slope.
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Our first sighting in 2012 of a Little Owl (actual species common name) did not occur until December. It is on the meadow post providing an opportunity to try at the newly installed flashgun. From about 30 metres away the flash doesn't bother the owl (nor does one from 6 metres at the kitchen window bother a Tawny Owl). A little noise at the house drew the birds attention momentarily for the top right image.
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