Since I walked up to this area last year, I’ve been keeping an eye on it, we drive by most days and I now walk up to or by it most days too. Because I discovered Nuthatches up there, I decided to try leaving out a food mix to see what might come down to feed so on January 2nd I took my first walk up with food in bag.
On the way, there’s another flat-topped fence post, right on a corner so I dropped a few bits there, just to see what was around.
I hadn’t even stepped back when this wee beastie dropped down next to me. Result.
Robins are fabulous wee birds with great character so I’m always happy to see one and photograph it. This fence post is only a few hundred yards, in an almost straight line from my destination so I headed on up there and dropped some food onto the main post.
There were visitors instantly, in fact they were gathering above me as I loaded up the face post! I backed off to let them come down, the Great Tits are quite hesitant and stayed high but the Coal Tits were straight in there, they’re fast wee movers and it was hard work trying to get a few shots but, after a short while… this happened.
A Red Squirrel climbed the post and started munching. My position and the light couldn’t have been better, must remember the time.
My only issue with this session was……….. I was shooting in Jpeg! I’d forgotten I reset the shooting menu on this camera, the images are grand but I wouldn’t be able to do a lot with them if they weren’t. I’m terrible at checking before I go out or get to the location.
Isn’t he or she just gorgeous?
OK, sorry about that, I was really quite pleased with those shots 🙂
It skipped off the post and ran down the lane, across and into the woods on the other side.
Meanwhile, back at the post.
A Nuthatch dropped down and grabbed a peanut half. They are the real reason I was here, I’d first found them back in October, the squirrel was a real bonus.
Really quite fussy aren’t they? I counted around four of them, which is great for the area; hopefully they’ll stay and nest too.
At one point, one of them landed on the trunk of the Oak, right above my head and froze! I took …………. many shots, it just didn’t move; its head and eyes were moving a little but essentially it stayed perfectly still.
Just under two minutes it was there, I moved around trying to get better angles and light but it stayed on that spot with me shuffling around only a few feet below. Two minutes is a long time to hand hold a camera and 180-600mm zoom!These next two shots have not been cropped at all, just lightened and resized, to give an idea of how close this bird was.
I just checked the times of the first and last shots. 13:16 to 13:18.
Other bird species are available, sorry about that folks, Nuthatch overload; I’m just really happy to have them so close to home, a half mile walk.
Coal Tit posing on a branch.
At last, another bird turned up 🙂
A Treecreeper, on a branch right in front of me, albeit a little further away. I’m always happy to get any decent shots of them, they’re not renowned for staying still for too long and the next one under lichen I was really pleased to get.
OK, I’m going to close this one off for now, I have many more shots of more birds for this day but it’s getting a bit long so, I’ll probably add a Pt. 2 soon.
patch photos
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