photos from the past 40 years
A selection of winter visitors for the Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Visitors.
These bird species move from their breeding grounds to spend the winter in different locations.
A feeding Whooper Swan, a winter visitor to the Martin Mere Wildfowl and Wetland Centre, Lancashire, England.
A male Common Redpoll, a winter visitor to Punnichy, Saskatchewan, Canada.
A Fieldfare, a winter visitor to Cheshire, England.
A Snowy Owl, a winter visitor to southern Ontario, Canada.
This is my contribution to the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Nostalgic.
Here’s a small selection of places, species or things that I am nostalgic about.
Having moved to Canada in the late 1990s I still miss the European Robin. They were usually real characters. I had one that would land on the door mirror of the car as soon as I parked. It knew that there was a good chance of something to eat. Here’s one having a bath in Cheshire, England.
Motorcycles in fog from Snowdonia in North Wales in 1981. This makes me nostalgic for a couple of reasons. Firstly, in those days I would strap a camera bag on the back of a motorcycle and take off across the country or Europe. Secondly, the shot was taken with Ilford XP1, I was one of the field testers prior to its launch. In those days I shot as much black and white film as colour. I no longer have the ability to “see” in black and white the way I could in the days of shooting film.
In the late 1990s I was living in central Saskatchewan, Canada. Each autumn large numbers of Snow Geese would congregate on their way south for the winter. In this photo a flock is taking off from part of the Last Mountain Lake National Wildlife Area. The sight and sound of the birds taking flight is something I hope I never forget.
A hoarfrost covered Oak tree in Cheshire, England in the early 1980s. This is nostalgia about the simplicity of photography in those days. A manual focus camera and a couple of lenses. A few years later I was carrying a backpack for the various cameras and lenses.
This is my contribution to the Cosmic Photo Challenge: Showcase Yourself.
Having been taking photos for over 40 years I had a few ideas for the challenge and changed my plans for the post several times. Eventually I decided to pick one image from each decade.
Storm clouds and light beams over Loch Arkaig, Scotland in 1985. After 3 days of rain it stopped for a while.
Male and female American Avocets on a slough near Punnichy, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1995. I spent an hour with the birds, the only sighting of the species I have had.
An Osprey with a White Sucker on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario, Canada in 2008. I went down to the shoreline for the sunrise and stayed for a while checking out what birds were around.
Rainbow over a barn on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, Canada in 2017. The rain was too heavy to stop for a shot of the rainbow over some trees in their autumn colour. A quarter mile later the rain had eased off enough to stop.
Two backlit Sandhill Cranes in a hay field soon after sunrise.
This is my contribution to Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge: Two of Anything.
My contribution to the A Photo a Week Challenge is two photos this week. The prompt is Babies which got me thinking about bird species with young.
That made me think of two very different species that nest in tree cavities and will also use nest boxes.
This is a Common Merganser, a larger species of duck that needs a large tree cavity or nestbox. As soon as the eggs hatch the female carries the young to the water in her bill.
These are Eurasian Blue Tits. There are two adults feeding recently hatched young in a nestbox. Unlike the Common Merganser these young are born naked. It will be approximately 21 days before they have grown flight feathers and can leave the nestbox.
Throwback Thursday travels back to Cheshire, England in the 1980s and is a follow-up to last week’s post.
This is a Redwing, the second Thrush species that arrives in the U.K. from northern Europe to spend the winter. This individual has taken up residence in a Holly tree where it was feeding on the berries.
This is my contribution to the Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Flamboyant Red.
The prompt got me thinking about some of the various bird species with red in their common English names. Some have very little red plumage.
Then I thought about some of the red birds that don’t have red in their common English names. Such as the Northern Cardinal, you can’t get much more flamboyantly red.
