My Saturday Bird this week is a portrait of a Greylag Goose (Anser anser).
This individual was photographed in the mid 1980s when most of the Greylag Geese in the U.K. were feral birds associating with Canada Geese and other wildfowl species. Recent population numbers for the species across Europe show a dramatic increase, possibly due to climate change affecting their migration patterns.
The bird is at “The Mere” on the edge of the town of Ellesmere in Shropshire, England in winter.
This is my contribution to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge prompt: Flowers: Blue or Purple.
I thought of two blue flowers that I find visually interesting, Borage and Chicory.
A Borage flower in a garden in Nantwich, Cheshire, England in the mid 1990s. Photographed with a 300mm telephoto lens to isolate the flower and buds from the surrounding plants.
A Chicory flower on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, Canada last September. Photographed with a fast portrait lens to help isolate the flower from the surrounding plants.
This is my day 1 contribution to Becky’s October Squares on the theme of Kind.
It’s not the European Robin standing on my 600mm lens that is the one of a kind. It’s the one of a kind mix of camera equipment it’s standing on. The lens is an EBC Fujinon 600mm f/5.6 that has been converted to an Olympus OM mount. Out of shot, the lens is being supported by a home made gimbal tripod head. Built before any of the commercial gimbal tripod heads were available.
My Saturday Bird this week is a male Common Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis).
Alternative common English names include Eurasian Kingfisher and River Kingfisher although I don’t recall ever seeing one on a river. The species is found across Europe, North Africa and Asia.
This individual was photographed on a small pool next to a canal in southern Cheshire, England in the early 1990s.
My Saturday Bird this week is a young Eurasian Blue Tit.
The photo raises a couple of interesting points. The yellow plumage shows it is a young bird hatched from an egg in the spring. It has only been out of the nest for a couple of months. The bird has a ring on its leg which means that it was probably ringed while in the nest.
I did some research and the closest location I could find for the bird to be ringed was three miles away in a straight line. That means that this bird has already travelled a considerable distance in the short time since it left the nest.
The other interesting point is the birds activity. It’s pecking open an Oriental Poppy seed pod to get at the seeds inside. I had seen and photographed adult birds doing this previously but not young birds. So did this bird learn how to do this by watching an adult or is it instinctive behaviour?
This is my day 5 contribution to Becky’s July Squares on the theme of Perspective.
The shadows of the various trees are a bit strange in this photo. The shadows cast by the row of trees seem to be pointing in a different direction to the shadow cast by the solitary tree in the field. That’s because the field is in effect a miniature valley. The shadows of the row of trees are on one slope and the shadow of the solitary tree is on the other slope.
Trees and their shadows at Bickerton Hill in southern Cheshire, England.
