Throwback Thursday travels back to Cheshire in the spring of 1987 as I continue the story of the nesting Eurasian Blue Tits. Photographed using a specially constructed nestbox in a Hatherton garden.
The young are almost fully grown and will be leaving the nestbox in a few days. Here one of the adults is about to feed a green caterpillar to one of the young.
This is my contribution to the Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge: Story.
I thought of the story of a pair of Eurasian Blue Tits nesting in a nestbox in Cheshire. In 1987 I documented the complete nesting cycle of a pair of Eurasian Blue Tits using a specially constructed nestbox built into a garden shed in a Hatherton garden.
Having digitised all the nestbox slides last winter I had lots of photos to pick from so I decided to limit myself to four photos illustrating key points of the nesting cycle.
One of the adults lining the nest with a feather prior to the start of egg laying.
The male feeding the female during incubation.
An adult feeding one of the young.
Close to leaving, one of the young at the entrance hole exercising its wings.
This is my contribution to the Friendly Friday Photo Challenge: Surprise.
Something different from me for a surprise, a post about being surprised by some of the photos I have discovered while digitising my film archives.
When I was digitising some of my black and white negatives I discovered a photo of a camera bag in snow taken in the early 1980s. Shortly after that I was backing up photos on an old tablet and discovered another photo of a camera bag in snow. At that point I realised I had quite a few photos of various camera bags in snow taken over the decades.
I don’t know why I took them unless it was simply a record of the conditions. So a thought a selection of the photos would be a surprising contribution to the challenge.
My Tenba P595 in the snow in Hatherton, Cheshire in the early 1980s. Tenba bags were newly imported into the U.K. back then.
My Tenba P895 in the snow on the Colpoy’s Bay shoreline at sunrise. By the time the photo was taken this bag was around 30 years old.
My Domke F-6 sitting in the snow on the South Bruce Peninsula. A smaller bag I got for my DSLR and kit of manual focus prime lenses.
My Domke F-2 sitting in the snow on the Colpoy’s Bay shoreline. My bag for a DSLR and fast zoom lenses.
Throwback Thursday travels back to a garden shed in Hatherton, Cheshire in the spring of 1987.
I was documenting the nesting cycle of a pair of Eurasian Blue Tits using a specially constructed nestbox built into a garden shed.
At this point all the eggs have hatched but the young are still small and naked. As a result, on cool mornings the female stays on the nest keeping them warm while the male feeds them.
In this photo the female has moved off the nest so that the male can feed a caterpillar to one of the young.
This is my contribution to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Sense of Smelling.
I was stuck for an idea for the prompt until remembering a comment someone made on Facebook after I had posted a photo of a moto cross bike from the 1970s. The comment was about the distinctive smell from a lot of racing engine’s in those days.
It was the smell of Castrol R, an oil that contained a percentage of Castor seed oil giving a very distinctive smell to the exhaust fumes.
A couple of photos from my local moto cross circuit in the late 1970s, Hatherton near Nantwich in southern Cheshire.
This is my contribution to the One Word Sunday prompt Company.
I had a couple of ideas for the challenge before thinking about it being spring in the northern hemisphere and that lots of species are in the process of breeding.
In this case the female Eurasian Blue Tit will spend approximately 14 days incubating the eggs while being kept company by the male who regularly brings her food.
I had a few ideas for the A Photo a Week Challenge: Fleeting but none of them really worked for me until I started thinking about some of the “grab shots” I remember taking over the years.
I remembered sitting in a garden shed I was using as a hide (blind) waiting for the resident European Robin to land on the telephoto lens I had set up. While waiting for the bird I noticed a pair of House Sparrows mating in the hedge. I swung the lens around and managed to get three photos before it was all over.
House Sparrows mating in a garden hedge.
Some time later one of the shots of the mating House Sparrows was published in BBC Wildlife magazine. None of the photos of the European Robin on the lens have been published but I have been using a version as my avatar for years.
The European Robin on a telephoto lens in a Cheshire garden.
