This is my contribution to the Tuesday Photo Challenge – Twist prompt.
I had a few ideas for the prompt and even edited photos of two species of snakes before heading off in a different direction.
An adult Eurasian Blue Tit twists to feed the young while the young twist to try to get the food. The young are almost fully grown at this stage meaning that the adults often cling to the entrance hole to feed them.
This week my Saturday Bird is the Eurasian Siskin (Spinus spinus). Other common English names include European Siskin, Common Siskin or just Siskin.
The Eurasian Siskin is common throughout Europe and Eurosiberia. It is a member of the finch family and is related to the American Goldfinch and Pine Siskin found in North America.
This is a male feeding on peanuts in a garden in southern Cheshire, England.
My Saturday Bird this week is the Redwing (Turdus iliacus), a member of the thrush family. It’s not related to the Red-winged Blackbird native to North America.
The Redwing is native to Europe and the Palearctic and is a winter visitor to the U.K. although a few birds stay to breed in the summer. This individual is eating a Holly berry in a garden in Hatherton, Cheshire, England.
This is my day 11 contribution to Becky’s October Squares challenge on the theme of Kind.
Eleven Eurasian Blue Tit in a nestbox. Technically there was eleven young plus the adult but only 10 young are in view.
My Saturday Bird this week is a young Eurasian Blue Tit.
The photo raises a couple of interesting points. The yellow plumage shows it is a young bird hatched from an egg in the spring. It has only been out of the nest for a couple of months. The bird has a ring on its leg which means that it was probably ringed while in the nest.
I did some research and the closest location I could find for the bird to be ringed was three miles away in a straight line. That means that this bird has already travelled a considerable distance in the short time since it left the nest.
The other interesting point is the birds activity. It’s pecking open an Oriental Poppy seed pod to get at the seeds inside. I had seen and photographed adult birds doing this previously but not young birds. So did this bird learn how to do this by watching an adult or is it instinctive behaviour?
This is my day 28 contribution to Becky’s July Squares on the theme of Perspective and another of my eye level perspective photos.
This one is a little different than a lot of my eye level perspective series for July Squares. Rather than lying down, sometimes in something nasty, I am standing in a bedroom taking photographs out of the bedroom window.
This is a Redwing, a member of the Thrush family and a native of Europe and the Palearctic feeding on a Holly berry in a Hatherton, Cheshire garden in the winter.
This is my contribution to the final Lens-Artists Photo Challenge Season prompt Winter.
I will be following the rules I set for myself at the start of the Season prompts, one bird photo, one scenic photo and one flora and fauna photo. One from my time in Saskatchewan, Canada, one from when I lived in the U.K. and one photo from Ontario, Canada.
This final season was probably the hardest to select photos for and still follow the rules I set for myself. There were so many favourite winter images I had to ignore.
A Whooper Swan feeding at the Martin Mere Wetland Centre, Lancashire, England. Whooper Swans are one of two species of swans arrive to spend the winter in the U.K.
Chantry Island lighthouse at sunset in the winter. Chantry Island is just off the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario, Canada.
An Eastern Gray Squirrel photographed near Punnichy, Saskatchewan, Canada. One of those days when it doesn’t look as cold as it actually was. I remember it being around -30°C although this squirrel seemed a lot less bothered about the cold than the photographer was.
