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.
I had a couple of ideas for the Tuesday Photo Challenge – Return.
I was thinking of some of the locations I have returned to multiple times. There was quite a list between England and Canada. However, that seemed a little obvious and I have written about some of them previously.
Then I thought about last summer when I was testing various lenses adapted to a mirrorless camera. There was a couple of local details that I returned to. One of them, some Ivy growing up a tree trunk, I have been photographing with various cameras and lenses for over two years.
A patch of evening sunlight illuminates a section of the Ivy. A photo from the summer of 2018 and part of the 52 week photo project I did that year.
A photo from last summer taken shortly after getting out of rehab after an accident. I was testing a small, light Olympus mirrorless camera with the kit lens due to the condition of my right shoulder and arm.
A sepia toned monochrome conversion from last summer. I was testing a 25mm CCTV lens adapted to a small Olympus mirrorless camera.
A photo from last winter. I was testing my Rokinon 85mm lens on a Sony mirrorless camera.
A photo from a couple of weeks ago. I used my 7artisans 35mm f/1.2 lens on a small Olympus mirrorless camera.
This is my contribution to the Tuesday Photo Challenge – Animals.
Having been digitising my slide archives I had various options so I needed to come up with a theme.
In the end I decided to keep it simple and go with one photo from my time in Cheshire, England, one from my time in Saskatchewan, Canada and one from my time in Ontario, Canada.
A Red Fox in a hay field at Faddiley, Cheshire, England. A favourite and an easy choice after the photo was used in a field guide to garden wildlife. Rather amusing as it’s fairly obviously in a hay field.
A Striped Skunk on the Middle Quill Lake shoreline, Saskatchewan, Canada in the spring. This was also a relatively easy pick despite having a few animals to select from. I went with this Skunk because a lot of people’s reaction to the photo. I was never concerned about being sprayed. Skunks have very poor eyesight so my trick is to talk calmly to them. That way they know you’re there and you aren’t going to surprise them.
An American Red Squirrel in dappled sunlight on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, Canada. This shot was the hardest to select, in the end I went with this photo because it was used in a calendar. I also like the effect of the dappled sunlight filtering through the trees which is why I had set up in that location.
This is my contribution to the Tuesday Photo Challenge – Travel.
As it’s spring and we are seeing a few summer migrants on their way north for the summer my idea for this challenge was bird migration. I have a few species in my files that make very impressive migrations.
So I thought a small selection of birds that are part way through their long distance migrations.
This is an adult White-crowned Sparrow with an immature White-crowned Sparrow in the background. These birds are on autumn migration and were photographed in my yard. The immature bird would have hatched from an egg in northern Canada in the summer. Some White-crowned Sparrows breed as far north as the edge of the tree line in Arctic Canada and some will winter as far south as central Mexico.
This is a female Northern Wheatear on autumn migration. Photographed on the bank of Hurleston Reservoir near Nantwich in southern Cheshire, England. This bird will have spent the summer in either Greenland or Arctic Canada. It has crossed the Atlantic Ocean either by flying directly to Britain or by travelling via Iceland. After resting and feeding on the reservoir bank for a while it will continue its migration to spend the winter in Sub-Saharan Africa.
This is a juvenile Red Knot on autumn migration. Photographed on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario at sunrise. This bird will have hatched from an egg in the Canadian Arctic in the summer. After feeding and resting it will continue to head south to spend the winter on the southern tip of South America. That’s 15,000 kilometers or 9,000 miles. One bird, banded (ringed) in South America in 1995 was recorded in the Canadian Arctic in 2014 by which time its total flight distance exceeded the distance to the moon. There’s more information on B95, nicknamed Moonbird here.
I had a couple of ideas for the Tuesday Photo Challenge – Connect.
I went with the following idea because there’s two types of connection involved.
The first is a channel connecting a marsh to a section of the Last Mountain Lake National Wildlife Area in Saskatchewan, Canada.
The second is the connection between the birds and the photographer. It was a hot summer afternoon and my options were to lie in the hot sun on the edge of the channel or sit in the water with the birds. After I had been sitting in the water for a while the birds got used to me being there and pretty much ignored me. That’s the sort of connection you want, the birds behaving naturally as if you weren’t there.
The reason for me sitting in the water, a flock of American White Pelicans fishing in a channel where a marsh drains into a section of the lake.
I noticed that I was also sharing the channel with a Red-necked Grebe.
After a while the Pelicans would swim out of the current in the channel and paddle past me back to the start.
The Grebe also got used to my presence in the water and would surface anywhere around me after a dive.
This is my contribution to the Tuesday Photo Challenge – Spread.
When I read the prompt I thought of wide angle landscapes that take in a spread of view wider than the human eye can see without moving. I had actually started editing photos for the post before thinking of birds with spread wings.
Spreading its wings. A Great Crested Grebe stretching its wings on Hurleston Reservoir near Nantwich, Cheshire, England and the photo I thought of that caused me to rewrite this post.
Two pairs of spread wings. Two American White Pelicans gliding between Little Quill Lake and Middle Quill Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Wings spread for take off. A Black-capped Chickadee on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, Canada.
Tail spread, trying to impress a female in the spring. A male Yellow-headed Blackbird displaying near Punnichy, Saskatchewan, Canada.
When I read the prompt for the Tuesday Photo Challenge – Scale I had several ideas for a post.
Landscapes taken with a telephoto where it’s difficult to get a sense of scale, extreme close-ups where you can’t tell what you’re looking at.
So, typically for me recently, I went in a completely different direction after thinking of a particular photo.
This is the photo I thought of, a Great Crested Grebe looking lost amongst gulls in a winter roost on Hurleston Reservoir near Nantwich, Cheshire. These are mostly Black-headed Gulls, there’s one Common Gull close to the edge of the frame at about 1 o’clock.
This may explain why the Great Crested Grebe is looking lost. A section of a winter gull roost on Hurleston Reservoir. Again, mostly Black-headed Gulls with a few Common Gulls, one Lesser Black-backed Gull and one Herring Gull.
If the second photo didn’t give a sense of scale to the Great Crested Grebe looking lost this one may. This is most of a fairly typical winter gull roost in the 1990s. Anywhere between 12,000 and 15,000 gulls was a normal count. If you look closely there’s a Great Crested Grebe just swimming into the frame on the left hand side of the photo.
