Category Archives: Birds

A Grey Wet Day

November 1, 2013 by Words | Comments Off

It’s really done little else but rain today. It was raining when I took this photo of the local cormorant:

Cormorant

And it was raining when I snapped these ducks in the road which was partly flooded.

Ducks at the edge of a flooded road

There was the briefest break in the weather when I got this shot of a buzzard sweeping low over the fields.

Buzzard

And after a brief but major downpour it all eased off again to get this shot taken through the strangely lit gloom.

Gulls on Falmer Pond

Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.

Also posted in Bird of Prey, water birds Tagged , , , |

Woodpigeon and Berries

November 1, 2013 by Words | Comments Off

It’s been very wet today, but birds have to eat whatever the weather.

The garden here is home to a number of woodpigeons. They live in the trees just beyond the perimeter but spend a good deal of time looking for morsels of food in the garden. Despite the constant drizzle, this one was doing rather well, once it had managed to gain its balance on the spindly shrub.

Woodpigeon eating berries

Woodpigeon eating berries

Pretty was hanging around at the same time, so I have managed to get my fox of the day photo.

fox

On other fronts, it was announced today that the My Opera blogging community will be closing in March 2014. This isn’t a great surprise to me, and confirms the suspicions I had when I moved my blog over to my own space a few months ago. What I didn’t do was transfer the embedded images, a vast number of which are still linked back to the Opera servers. I’m now in the process of migrating them over here. Thankfully there’s a handy little plugin called ‘Import External Images’ which is taking most of the pain out of the process but I still have to update each post individually (and with over 2000 that’s not a trivial task).

Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.

Also posted in Behaviour, Foxes

Birds and Butterflies

October 30, 2013 by Words | Comments Off

The storm has passed and we are back with fine autumnal weather. Cool, but the skies are clear. Outside tonight I can see Jupiter shining brightly and Orion rising. Much earlier today the skies were blue, perfectly setting off the pure white of a little egret.

Little egret

Little egret

Little egret

The Canada geese were also enjoying the calm.

Canada geese

Canada geese

Canada geese

At lunchtime I stepped out on to the start of the South Downs Way. Here the smaller birds dominate. There was a lone (and very late) swallow overhead, and a colourful jay criss-crossing between the trees.

Jay

If the swallow (the photo is not worth posting) was a late visitor, I was equally surprised to see numerous butterflies including several red admirals and this beautiful clouded yellow.

Clouded yellow butterfly

Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.

Also posted in Butterfly, Insects, water birds Tagged , , , |