Tag: young

A Photo a Week Challenge: Babies

David M10 Comments

My contribution to the A Photo a Week Challenge is two photos this week. The prompt is Babies which got me thinking about bird species with young.

That made me think of two very different species that nest in tree cavities and will also use nest boxes.

This is a Common Merganser, a larger species of duck that needs a large tree cavity or nestbox. As soon as the eggs hatch the female carries the young to the water in her bill.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Babies

 

These are Eurasian Blue Tits. There are two adults feeding recently hatched young in a nestbox. Unlike the Common Merganser these young are born naked. It will be approximately 21 days before they have grown flight feathers and can leave the nestbox.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Babies

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David M17 Comments

This female Common Merganser has made a section of the Colpoy’s Bay shoreline her home since arriving in the spring. She found a mate and raised a brood of young, one of which is riding on her back.

The young have to grow big and strong enough to head south for the winter before Colpoy’s Bay freezes over.

This is my take on the One Word Sunday challenge Home.

One Word Sunday: Home

Lens-Artists: Something Old, New, Borrowed and Blue

David M19 Comments

I thought that the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Something Old, New, Borrowed and Blue was going to be quite a hard challenge.

Until I thought of one photo that covered three out of the four, Old, New and Blue. All I needed was Borrowed and in the end the photo I picked for Borrowed also covered Blue and tied in with the first.

An adult Eurasian Blue Tit on a frost rimmed twig in the winter. Taken with a Borrowed 800mm lens and Nikon camera when I was toying with the idea of swapping my 600mm lens for an 800mm.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Something Borrowed and Blue.

 

Old and New Eurasian Blue Tits in a specially constructed nestbox in Cheshire, England.

Eurasian Blue Tit feeding young.

July Squares: (Eurasian) Blue Tits.

David M10 Comments

A contribution to Becky’s July Squares: Blue photo challenge.

Having posted a grumpy Great Blue Heron as part of the challenge it didn’t occur to me how many birds there are with blue in their common English names until writing this post. Expect to see a few more bird species before the end of the month.

An adult Eurasian Blue Tit feeding young with a caterpillar. When the photo was taken they were simply Blue Tits and they had a different scientific name.

Eurasian Blue Tit feeding young.

Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Satisfaction

David M8 Comments

This is my contribution to the Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Satisfaction.

My first thought was of the Rolling Stones song before seeing the Mick Jagger graphic on the challenge page. Somehow I ended up thinking about some of the photos from last year that I submitted for consideration in 2019 calendars.

I submitted the three photos below to a calendar publishing company I hadn’t dealt with before. They were looking for images for a wildlife calendar.

In the end they had so many submissions that they decided to publish a birds calendar as well as the wildlife calendar. All three of my shots made it into the calendars.

To make the 100% success rate all the more satisfying, the shots were taken with a decade old DSLR and a manual focus telephoto lens I purchased used in the mid 1990s.

A young male Rose-breasted Grosbeak in the rain.

In the rain.

 

An American Red Squirrel in dappled sunlight.

Sunlit Squirrel.

 

A juvenile Ruby-throated Hummingbird approaches the feeder.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird juvenile.