photos from the past 40 years
I had this written yesterday so a quick update. Our internet connection is back and seems to be working okay. It will be interesting to see if it continues working. I seem to recall a quick fix a couple of years ago that didn’t stay fixed and it was down for days the second time.
Throwback Thursday travels back to Cheshire in the late 1980s with a Eurasian Tree Sparrow feeding in an orchard at Faddiley, Cheshire, England.
Having spent a lot of my spare time digitising my slide archives over the winter the Cosmic Photo Challenge: Inside was rather well timed.
I now have digital copies of most of the nestbox interiors documenting the nesting cycle of various hole nesting species. So here’s the inside of three different nestboxes and three different species using them.
An adult Eurasian Blue Tit feeding young. The adult has an unidentified insect in its bill.
A male House Sparrow feeding young.
Juvenile Great Tits begging for food having just heard an adult land at the nestbox entrance hole. Occasionally the adults will take a break from the constant feeding to feed themselves and do some feather maintenance. As a result, all the young are hungry when feeding resumes.
This is my contribution to the Cosmic Photo Challenge: Liquids.
Liquid turning into solid at sunrise as waves form icicles on the Colpoy’s Bay shoreline on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, Canada.
A Common Swift feeding on insects over the surface of Hurleston Reservoir near Nantwich, Cheshire, England. This is a young bird by the brown body. It was one of around a dozen birds feeding over the water surface.
Half a cup of coffee. This is the third version of half a cup of coffee I have used in blog posts using two different cups of coffee and three different lenses. This version was photographed with the 7artisans 35mm f/1.2 lens.
A Ring-billed Gull feeding in the surf on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario, Canada. The Ring-billed Gulls will often feed in the surf, either standing on shoreline or patrolling up and down watching for anything edible that gets washed up.
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.
Feeding.
Bathing.
Scratching.
Resting.
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.
The Light. Two photos of Common Terns mating on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario, Canada.
Well, technically front paws but being used the same way as hands.
An American Red Squirrel feeding on seed under the bird feeders for the One Word Sunday challenge Hands.
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.
