Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
The weak sun touches the tail feathers of this Buzzard trying to make the most of a rather weak Thermal. This is an impression only - the bird travelled probably 50m between first and last images.
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This visit by the female Kestrel (top) was spoiled for the Kestrel by a single Jackdaw making it's displeasure felt as much as it dared.
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The female Muntjac Deer explores the site again. We love the shiny wet nose - something you dog lovers will be very familiar with.
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Jackdaws mate for life - and we suspect this pair are just such practicing togetherness ready for the Spring parenting
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The Collared doves being their usual loving selves - their loving coos regularly arrive over the CCTV monitors, as we hear as we prepared this text.
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One of our Tree Sparrows - we have at least 4 - at the hedge
bottom site. We also see them at the meadow site, and at the
kitchen feeder, but never in the trees at the Woodland site, and
only once (6 years ago) on the tree stump.
'Tree' Sparrow indeed!
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Our currently regular Barn Owl visitor (with ring on right leg) makes a landing side-on to camera. We love the view of the bird's clear cornea on the eye we see side-on.
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36 Hours later, a visit from a different Barn Owl with no leg ring. We fancy that the underside of the wings is less patterned than our 'regular' Barn Owl. We do hope they are a 'pair' but have no real idea where they 'live'.
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A landing of the Barn Owl from the rear gives us a good view of the beautiful wing feathers.
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This image of the Barn Owl looks like the bird had just landed and triggered the camera as it folded the wings over the centre of the pole where the sense beam passes.
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Our vegetable garden is this year fallow for the winter awaiting
warmer and dryer days. To this Grey Squirrel the loose soil is a
wonderland to dig over for hidden treasures.
Top left the Squirrel found a stem of onion it gleefully devoured.
Bit too hot - lets have a drink.
Another dig found this small potato - much too good to risk
eating where others could try to steal it, so off to some
secluded spot to eat it.
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The female Muntjac Deer seems mostly to visit this Woodland site.
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The slit by the Muntjac Deer's eye is her scent marking gland.
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From a less attractive frame, this is the Muntjac Deer facing left showing us the underside of her front left hoof with her Right front hoof firmly in the ground tip down making a characteristic 'slot' we find marking her progress in soft paths all around the plot.
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This Fox visited all 3 ground level photo sites in about half an hour across midnight. In this frame there is a hint of an injury on the forehead.
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This Fox visited all 3 ground level photo sites in about half an hour across midnight. In this frame there is a clear view of a puncture wound on the top of the head. Another frame (not included) shows a slightly torn base to the ear to our left which suggests to us that the Fox ran into a strand of barbed wire that tore out some fur. Ouch!
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A Tawny Owl sometimes visits the perch for the peanut feeder outside the kitchen window. This one missed the sense beam by landing on the other side, but we spotted it on CCTV and crawled through the black kitchen to aim and fire off a couple of frames by accurate enough 'estimation'.
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This Tawny Owl landed on the Kitchen window perch on the 'proper side' to fire the camera. We think the left wing (near the feeder) has been partially folded to avoid impact with the feeder.
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The moment there is any sound at the conservatory door a Robin appears nearby hoping for an easy meal. It often perches in this 20 year old Yew tree waiting for his gift.
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A Tawny Owl visited the Meadow post twice just on either side of midnight. It looks like a bit of a mist was descending.
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This Great Tit is just landing. The front claws have just touched the surface, but the back claws have not. The wings are already folded.
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A female Blackbird with wings already folded before completing touchdown. This bird has the 'yellowish' beak we associate with the UK residents rather than winter migrants.
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This female Blackbird posing nicely. We think she is the female of the Winter Migrants, where the males have Black beaks.
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2 pairs of mallard ducks are also frequenting the site. Here is a
female stepping carefully across the ice of the Round Pond. 'Her'
male was just setting off as well, out of frame to the right.
So far no bird has ever become stuck in or on our ice, but it is
something we have seen several times at public parks, probably
because they have no safe place to roost off of the water.
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This Barn Owl occasionally brings catches to the top of the meadow post to eat. These 3 images are about 45 seconds apart left to right. We can't help think the bird on the right has a satisfied expression, and a bulge below the facial disk where the unfortunate rodent is awaiting digestion.
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The coloured patch at the left is a sundog - an optical effect caused by high ice clouds. If the clouds are the same both side you get them equally spaced on either side of the sun (at the right edge here) but there was only clear sky to the right.
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This is a closer view of the sundog.
We think it is rather like a pigeon in flight (beak pointing left) with a
feather scattered above.
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We have no idea 'What Happened next' as this Wood Pigeon approaches the Tree Sparrow, but we can all have some fun inventing some captions.
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Goodness me, a tree sparrow and Robin so close they could easily touch. Are they discussing who dropped the feather in front of them?
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We spotted this Buzzard standing upright on the perch on CCTV, but we couldn't get near the camera without frightening away the bird. We also saw it on the meadow post but failed to get an image. We finally saw the bird leaving our patch pursued by a couple of Corvids as is traditional around here.
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A mostly pristine male Great Spotted Woodpecker in the Ash tree on the main pond island. The Yellow-Brown growths are harmless Lichens. The brown marks on the bark are damage we didn't previously know about - probably either the Woodpeckers or Grey Squirrels
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This Kestrel was a restless soul, and with no disturbance we could detect moved from tree to tree every minute of two on its hunt. Its favourite branches were 2 oak trees about 30m apart - here it is leaving the more distant branch. The foreshortened viewpoint of a path vaguely towards the camera has forced us to take a lot of artistic license to spread them out.
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After the initial excitement of a small flock of Little Egrets a few weeks ago,
sighting are rare. This one was flying fast 'with the wind' here
photographed at 7 frames per second - so a bit over half a second
of flight here.
The church spire is that of Hanslope Church.
The wires are courtesy of the National Grid, put up about a
decade ago and have spoiled the Northern view ever since.
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Our beautiful silver ghost Barn Owl arrives only just after dark, as it did for several days running.
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This Tawny Owl made it's only visit of the week in a very similar manner to the Barn Owl a few hours earlier, with the landing directions both governed by a strong Northerly wind they must land towards. The bird eyes are partly closed possibly to keep out the wind.
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6 successive frames suggested this montage top left to right, bottom left to right as both creatures returned repeatedly. Could the fox smell the alluring mouse from an hour or two earlier?
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Details from the bottom left image of this very healthy looking Fox.
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The Barn Owl visited every evening for a whole week, rather than once or twice. Here are three of the more attractive moments for you to enjoy.
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S T R E T C H . . .
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Many birds stand on one leg when resting. Our Barn owl with right leg ring seems to use each leg about equally.
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The female Kestrel has been spending a lot of time hunting from a Black Poplar tree overhanging the meadow.
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Sort of stepping in thin air!
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Every few minutes the female Kestrel moved to a new hunting site. Here we caught her dropping down to pick up speed. The flight montage is at about 4 fps.
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The field to our west is pasture used for grazing Bullocks and sheep. This year the sheep are much more interesting than the usual all-white variety we see. Photographed through a crack in the recently thinned hedge we got this view of a white sheep with black breast, and a horned 'brown' sheep..
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In the winter the sun streaks through the depleted leaf canopy to illuminate things that are dark all summer!
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Our only Owl sighting of any sort for a week was this Tawny Owl landing outside the kitchen window on the peanut feeder perch.
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A detail of the feet starting to wrap the talons around the perch.
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As the sun sets behind, this Grey Squirrel was busy sampling the
daily offerings.
Stale biscuit with jam on indeed - we spoil them rotten!
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No - we haven't picked up the male Blackbird and tilted it's image a bit! This really was the landing - or an attempted landing.
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