Tag: bird

CFFC: Red Knot

David M9 Comments

This is my contribution to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Needs to have the Letter “K” anywhere in the word.

I started thinking about some of the birds and mammals that have the letter K in their common English names. One of the first species that came to mind was Red Knot, possibly because in Britain the common English name is simply Knot.

Having spent some time with two juvenile Red Knot on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario when they had stopped off on autumn migration I decided to go with a selection of photos showing various activities.

These young birds had hatched from eggs a few months previously and had already traveled a considerable distance from the Canadian arctic. Some Red Knot fly to coastal South America for the winter.

 

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Letter K

Feeding.

 

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Letter K

Bathing.

 

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Letter K

Scratching.

 

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Letter K

Resting.

 

Sometimes it’s about the pattern on the water

David M11 Comments

This is a contribution to Jez Braithwaite’s Water Water Everywhere #15 Photo Challenge and another one of my photos that was taken for the pattern of the ripples on the water.

I probably didn’t need any more photos of an immature Grey Heron on this tree stump in the water at Hurleston Reservoir, southern Cheshire. By the mid 1990s I already had a selection when this shot was taken. I suspect that it was the pattern of the ripples that I was photographing.

 

Water Water Everywhere #15 Photo Challenge

 

Fan Of… Olympus OM Zuiko 350mm

David M16 Comments

This is a contribution to Jez Braithwaite’s Fan Of… #55 and a ramble about a lens I have been using for 24 years.

I brought the Olympus OM Zuiko 350mm f/2.8 used in 1996 and over the past 24 years it has been used to photograph a wide variety of subjects. The idea for this post came from exchanging comments with Jez after my recent Fan Of… Olympus Cameras post.

Having owned the lens for so long I have thousands of photos taken with it and I was having a very hard time selecting just five or six for this post. So this will be part one of two, this post will cover bird and wildlife images while the second post will cover everything else.

 

Fan Of... Olympus OM Zuiko 350mm

The 350mm lens on my home made ground pod. The ground pod dates back to the early 1990s.

 

Flying Osprey with flying fish.

An Osprey with a White Sucker on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario in 2008.

 

Sunlit Squirrel.

An American Red Squirrel in dappled sunlight on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario in 2018.

 

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Summer Scenes

American White Pelicans on a channel where a marsh drains into a section of the Last Mountain Lake National Wildlife Area, Saskatchewan in 1999. I was sitting in the water with the lens on a tripod in the water with me.

 

A displaying Eurasian Wren

A Eurasian Wren singing in the spring of 1997 at a reservoir in south Cheshire, England.

 

Ruby-throated Hummingbird juvenile.

A juvenile Ruby-throated Hummingbird in flight on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario in 2018.

 

Recently emerged from hibernation.

A Richardson’s Ground Squirrel looking for something to eat having just emerged from hibernation in the spring of 1998. Taken close to the town of Punnichy, Saskatchewan, Canada.

 

Cosmic Photo Challenge: The Dark and the Light

David M6 Comments

When I read Dale’s prompt for the Cosmic Photo Challenge: The Dark and the Light I thought it was a good one.

Twenty four hours and half a dozen ideas for a post later I was having second thoughts about how good a prompt it was. In fact I started writing this having finally decided on a theme only to rethink it and change tack completely before going back to my first choice.

The Dark. Two photos of Black Terns taken as they fed over a road side marsh in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Twisting and turning.

 

Twisting and turning

 

The Light. Two photos of Common Terns mating on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario, Canada.

Two Common Terns

 

mating Common Terns

 

Friendly Friday: Odd Couples

David M21 Comments

A contribution to throw Friendly Friday Photo Challenge: Odd Couples.

I had a couple of ideas for the challenge. Having started selecting photos featuring two different species I changed my mind and went for photos of two individuals of the same species.

 

Friendly Friday Photo Challenge: Odd Couples

Big and small Large White Butterfly caterpillars feeding on Nasturtium leaves in Hatherton, Cheshire, England.

 

Friendly Friday Photo Challenge: Odd Couples

One Herring Gull complains about something while being ignored by the second bird. Photographed on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario, Canada.

 

Friendly Friday Photo Challenge: Odd Couples

Adult and immature White-crowned Sparrows on the South Bruce Peninsula during autumn migration. The adult will have made the long distance migration before but it’s the first time for the immature bird which hatched from an egg on the tundra of arctic Canada in the summer.

 

Bohemian Waxwing in Winter

David M4 Comments

Throwback Thursday travels back to Saskatchewan in the late 1990s. I had found a small flock of Bohemian Waxwing eating Saskatoon berries along a fence line.

It was -30°C so I briefly considered using a portable hide (blind) until realising that the ground was to frozen to peg the hide down. Besides, if the cold wasn’t bothering the birds I could put up with it.

Throwback Thursday: 13th February 2020