Makes a Change from a Christmas Robin

No apologies for yet another photo of the Pheasant who has become a daily visitor. He is gradually getting used to me being around though he still looks at me cautiously. Yesterday I was able to get within 12 feet (4m) of him for a closer shot as I had been aiming to get a reasonable portrait.



Bobby and I wish all our readers a happy, peaceful end to 2011.

Friday at the Flicks - Merry Christmas + A Pheasant Visits

Best wishes to all:



Background images found as public domain animated GIFs on the web;
Sound Track: Carol of the Bells by Mykola Leontovych arranged by William Wallace and produced using the app iSequence on the iPad. That was only my second attempt at creating music with iSequence.
Animated GIFs needed to be converted to AVI files. For this I found a very useful free open source utility VirtualDub which can be found HERE. Animated GIFs make very short AVI files so they need to be added many times to the time line in video editing software to build up a reasonable sequence length.

The site mp3skull has access to many different performances of Carol of the Bells.
This is one of my favourites (to listen click the play button)
01 - Carol Of The Bells

Powered by mp3skull.com



Earlier in the week a Cock Pheasant made one of its occasional early morning visits to my garden. In the second clip you can see how large a Pheasant is when a male Chaffinch can be seen feeding in the same area.



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Wings on Wednesday - Return of the Pheasant

Early yesterday morning I spotted a Cock Pheasant on the roof of my shed. He was cautiously looking round and moving slowly towards the edge ready to fly down to see if there was any food to be had. After a short while he took the plunge and spent quite a while finding scattered seed in the grass. I took a lot of photographs but it was so overcast that even with the ISO dialled right up to 3000 shutter speeds rarely got past 1/150th sec.

These are the best of the bunch as the main problem was firing the camera when his head was still.





As he stayed in the garden for a reasonable length of time I also managed to take some video, which, all things being equal, should be available for Friday at the Flicks.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

Another good week last week with a     being gained by Adrian, Wilma, Matron and Glo identifying the 5p coin and Keith recognising it as a coin.

   

I think it is only this particular issue which has all the pitting over its surface. So far I haven't found another which looks like that.

For the last chance to gain a Gold Star this year here is a complete object for once.
Guess What:


Result next Monday but the next Guess What will be in January.

No prizes - just for fun.

Basketweave Bobby

OK, so I got bored as it is freezing outside. I though I would have a play with the free PS filter plug-in "AAA Blender"
 
which can be found .HERE. Included with the plug-in are a few border / frame masks and backgrounds but more frame masks can be downloaded from HERE and more texture backgrounds from Textureking HERE.

This is the result of using a basketweave texture and then adding a frame mask in the AAA Blender filter.



Yesterday I was really pleased to see a small group of Long-tailed Tits arrive in the garden. The first sighting for well over a year. Now the early morning temperature is around 0C I have the usual gathering of Blackbirds. Just as it started to get light I counted at least eleven around the back garden. It's about the only time I see so many males together without furious squabbles. Talking of birds squabbling - if you haven't seen Keith's video of Green Woodpeckers disputing a feeding area then it is well worth nipping over to "Caldecotte Lake - Dancing Woodpeckers" where Keith was fortunate enough to take some video of this unusual and rarely seen activity.

Cold but Nice Sunrise

Plenty of frost and ice about this morning but with few clouds in the sky there was a colourful sunrise for a short while. The view from my front door - minus telephone wires and pole.



An atry farty picture of a corvid on the telephone wire:

Friday at the Flicks - More Regular Bird Visitors

It has been one of those mornings. The latest version of Corel Video Studio Pro X4 is just as bad as the previous version for playing silly beggars when trying to load video clips from DV tape. This morning it got within three clips of the end of 26 minutes of filming when it decided to play it all backwards right back to the beginning and then stopped. Fortunately it had stored most of the clips on the hard drive.

Anyway I did eventually manage to produce the following video of some of the birds which have visited in the past week:



Soundtrack:  "Littbe River" from the free iPad app ":)Natural Music - Spiritual Pleasures" which is availabe for download through iTunes.

Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.