Some of my current work interspersed with photos from the past 40 years.
Monochrome Monday could have been a Throwback Thursday as it’s a shot from way back in my archives. Taken in Cheshire, England in the early 1980s when I used to keep a camera loaded with black and white film in my bag.
The upper leaf of this Hart’s Tongue Fern is lying upside down. It’s showing the sori that produce the spores used for reproduction.
It’s known as Hart’s Tongue Fern because the shape of the leaves resembles the tongue of a Hart, a male Red Deer.
One from the archives taken in Cheshire, England in the mid 1990s. I think this is Cotoneaster horizontalis, commonly grown in gardens and popular with some species of birds in the winter due to the berries. It is native to western China but is well established in the U.K. where some consider it my be becoming invasive.
I have two copies of the original slide. The first, done several years ago has a much warmer colour than this version edited last winter. I normally prefer a warmer colour balance to a shot but for this post went with the cooler colour balance.
A follow-up of sorts to a recent Throwback Thursday post of a Redwing eating a Holly berry.
The Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris) is another member of the Thrush family and related to the Redwing. As with the Redwing they arrive in Britain in the autumn to spend the winter having bred in northern Europe and Asia.
Taken in Cheshire, England in the 1980s. This bird had taken up residence in an orchard, feeding on windfall apples in the snow.
Throwback Thursday travels back to Cheshire, England in the mid 1980s.
The Redwing (Turdus iliacus) is a member of the Thrush family. They are winter visitors to Britain arriving in the autumn after breeding in northern regions of Europe and Asia. Wintering birds sometimes form loose flocks numbering up to 200 birds but I seem to remember this being a solitary bird. It’s feeding on a berry of a Holly (Ilex aquifolium) tree.
The photo was taken from a bedroom window so I was slightly higher than the bird but not enough for the angle to look odd. It was used in a field guide to garden wildlife and it was taken in a garden unlike some of my other photos used in the book.
Throwback Thursday travels back to Hurleston Reservoir, Cheshire, England in the 1990s.
A group of Black-headed Gulls (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) in winter plumage standing in a shallow section of the reservoir. I noticed that a surprising number of the birds were taking the opportunity to preen while standing in the water.
I’ve mentioned in previous posts about species having their common English names or their scientific names changed after DNA testing. In this case the scientific name has been changed since the photo was taken and captioned. So many species have had a name changed that these days l Google a species before I write a blog post or caption photos.
One from the archives taken in Cheshire in the 1980s. A wall box is a type of post box set into a wall.
This box was set into a sandstone wall on Bickerton Hill, Cheshire, England. Bickerton Hill is a low, red sandstone hill close to the southern end of a long-distance footpath known as The Sandstone Trail. The area was quarried in the past so the wall is probably built of locally sourced sandstone.
I did a selective colour treatment to leave the post box red with the rest of the image in monochrome.
Sometime after the photo was taken the post box was stolen. Removed from the wall in the dead of night I presume. Apparently there are people who collect old post boxes and obviously some aren’t concerned about obtaining them legally.
