A 52 week photo project interspersed with photos from the past 40 years.
Throwback Thursday travels back to Cheshire, England in the late 1980s.
This is a European Goldfinch feeding on seeds in a Teasel head. The seeds are a popular food source for the birds and the plant is grown to attract them by some people.
Teasel heads were used as a natural comb for the nap on wool in the past.
This week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge is Upside Down.
I was considering a variety of subjects and photos. Then I thought about the Nuthatch family of birds. They will walk down a tree trunk or branch head first just as easily as walking up one.
That got me thinking about the suet feeders we have. They’re upside down to discourage Blue Jays and Grackles while allowing Woodpeckers, Nuthatches and Chickadees to use them.
So a male Hairy Woodpecker feeding upside down.
Throwback Thursday travels back to Cheshire in the 1980s. The juvenile Eurasian Blue Tit is feeding on a Poppy seed head.
The photo is interesting for a couple of reasons. The juvenile Blue Tit is ringed. I did some research and the closest ringing location I could find was three miles away in a straight line. Which means that this juvenile has already travelled some distance from where it was ringed. Being a juvenile it could have been ringed when it was still in the nestbox.
Also interesting is that the bird is feeding on Poppy seeds after pecking a hole in the seed head. I have seen adult Blue Tits feeding this way. So did the juvenile bird learn this behavior by watching an adult or is it instinctive behavior to peck open seed heads?
A shot from a recent session in the yard using my ground pod to get down to eye level with the birds and mammals.
This Eastern Chipmunk was interested in the human lying in the grass while it searched for a few more seeds to stuff in its cheek pouches.
A male Eurasian Bullfinch feeds on fresh grass seed heads in a hay meadow.
One from the archives, taken in Cheshire, England in the late 1980s. There wasn’t much land being used for hay even in those days but I suspect that there’s much less now.
A pair of American Avocets feeding on a slough in Saskatchewan. By the curve of the bills it’s a male in front and a female behind.
A film shot from Saskatchewan in the mid 1990s. Taken from a vehicle window using a bean bag on the window frame to support the lens. A form of Throwback Thursday.
The Daily Post one word prompt is Partake.
An American Robin partaking of a quick snack on the Lake Huron shoreline this morning. I don’t know what it was eating but it ate five in quick succession.
A grab shot. I had gone down to the lakeshore to checkout the ice conditions only to find this section of Lake Huron ice free.
I keep an old digital camera in the car along with a couple of telephotos from the 1980s. The 300mm I used dates back to the mid 1980s and has suffered over the decades. It has some fungus internally that I keep in check by baking the lens in the oven occasionally.
