My Throwback Thursday post this week is returning to the story of the nesting cycle of a pair of Eurasian Blue Tit I documented in 1987.
The eggs are laid and the female has started incubating them. Here the male is feeding the female during incubation.
My Throwback Thursday post this week is continuing my look back at the nesting cycle of a pair of Eurasian Blue Tit I documented in 1987.
The nest is lined and the cup of the nest is formed. Now the female is in the nestbox early each morning laying an egg.
My Saturday Bird this week is a female Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) and is a follow up to my Saturday Bird two weeks ago which was a male Red-winged Blackbird.
I waited two weeks to post the female because the males normally arrive some time before the females. This allows the males to set up territories before the females arrive.
This female was photographed in central Saskatchewan in the spring.
This is my contribution to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Birds prompt.
With nearly 40 years of bird photography in my archives I decided to go with one photo from each decade.
1980s. An adult Eurasian Blue Tit feeding young in a specially constructed nestbox in a garden in Hatherton near Nantwich in southern Cheshire, England.
1990s. Male and female American Avocets in summer (breeding) plumage on a slough near Punnichy, Saskatchewan, Canada.
2000s. An Osprey with a White Sucker on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario, Canada.
2010s. An immature Ruby-throated Hummingbird on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, Canada.
My Saturday Bird this week is a continuation of last week’s post. This is a female Purple Finch (Haemorhous purpureus) in spring.
Photographed on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, Canada in a year when the species hung around after winter and bred.
This week Tina gives us the prompt Special Moments for the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge.
A female Wilson’s Phalarope. I was on a section of the Middle Quill Lake shoreline looking for summer migrants when half a dozen Wilson’s Phalaropes flew in and started feeding around me. I lay down in the sand (and wildfowl poop) to photograph them at eye level. They completely ignored me, some of the birds came so close I couldn’t focus on them.
Having been experimenting with intentional camera movement recently this photo may be where it started for me. A competitor in the 1982 Le Mans 24 hour motorcycle endurance race enters the start/finish straight shortly before midnight. Far to abstract for the magazine editor but I liked the images and have been experimenting on and off ever since.
An adult Eurasian Blue Tit feeding young in a specially constructed nestbox in a garden in Hatherton near Nantwich, Cheshire. I documented the entire nesting cycle from the beginning of nest building to the empty nestbox after the last youngster had left. Extensively published I spent a week looking at a nestbox photo on the contents page of the Radio Times without recognising it as mine.
Storm clouds and light beams over Loch Arkaig, Scotland. I was in Scotland one autumn with the plan of doing lots of landscape photography. With almost constant rain I wasn’t getting a lot of photos until the end of day three when the rain stopped towards sunset. One of the photos from this evening was published worldwide by Olympus Japan and won a national photo contest on the theme of ‘The Beauty of Light.’
Flora and Fauna Friday this week is the second part of my posts on the Common Hazel (Corylus avellana).
Last week my post was about the male Common Hazel catkins that produce the pollen to fertilise the female flowers.
This week my post is about the female flowers. The flowers are tiny, the entire bud in this photo is approximately the size of the head of a match. The red styles that form the visible part of the flower are 1 to 3 mm long.
