Monday 9 March 2009

Little and Large

I went through to the kitchen and glanced out of the window to see if there was anything interesting in the back garden. There, feeding on the lawn was a group of birds - the usual - Collared Doves, Pigeons and Chaffinches. In the middle of the group was a Pheasant. The last time I saw a pheasant in the garden was in November last year and I was beginning to think it had ended up as part of some ones Christmas dinner. I dashed through to get the camera and hurriedly took a few hand held shots which, considering the poor lighting conditions, ended up better than I expected.

A lot of the time it was a picture of Little and Large as the Pheasant and a Chaffinch were feeding so close together. Every now and then the breeze would get under the feathers of the Pheasant.

Pheasant and Chaffinch

Pheasant and Chaffinch

I was hoping to get a shot of the Pheasant taking off but had to make do with this shot of it stretching a wing.

Pheasant Stretching

Also visiting were a couple of Long Tailed Tits. I only ever see two together these days. Before the snowy and frosty days there were always six or seven together. I hope the reduced number means that they are a mated pair and not that we lost some in the bad weather.

Long Tailed Tit Long Tailed Tit

Yesterday I went to visit a friend and only managed a couple of photo opportunities - one of the five sailed windmill in Alford, Lincolnshire. At least it can be seen while the tree branches are bare. This is a working mill and is open to the public for much of the year.

Alford Windmill

The other stop was to photo some rain clouds over the Lincolnshire Wolds. Here there are three photos, taken freehand looking through the open car window, which have been stitched together using the demo version of Autostitch. As usual a larger version can be seen on Flickr by clicking on this picture.

Rain Clouds

6 comments:

  1. Lovely photos again John. How amazing to see a Pheasant in the garden. The pic of it with the Chaffinch is very comical, little and large indeed!

    I would love to get a photo of LTTs but only see them occasionally and so far never when the camera is at hand, I suppose there is a lesson for me there to always keep it handy.

    Nice moody shots of the mill and the rain clouds as well.

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  2. Hello ShySongbird.
    I was amazed the first time I saw a Pheasant in the garden. As for the LTTs - it was ages before I got my first photo of them as they only stay for a very short time and they soon disappear if they spot any movement in the kitchen.

    I often keep the camera ready in the kitchen, just in case. I keep hoping the Kingfisher will return so I can photo it but I've only seen it the once.

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  3. It's amazing what can turn up, but they're not often that big. It will add a few ££ to your bird seed costs if it keeps coming, but at least it didn't try for the fatballs!

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  4. Every now and then I have to rethink my bird feeding methods. Much as I like to see a variety of birds I can do without Rooks and Pheasants coming too often. They can get through a weeks supply in an hour or two.

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  5. Pheasants have such amazing colours - particularly visible in the last of the pictures. But LTTs definitely have their own charm IMHO! Looks like a successful 'photostitch' picture too.

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  6. Yes Tricia, I was quite surprised at the patterns on the Pheasant's wing feathers. I always think the LTTs look so cheeky. The main output from AutoStitch, a 85MB TIF file, looks really good - a pity the subject wasn't up to much but it has encouraged me to try some more.

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Thank you for visiting. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Any comment, or correction to any information or identification I get wrong, is most welcome. John

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