Some more images of commonplace birds, this time the blackbird (Turdus merula). For the male at least, the naming is clearly descriptive: the blackbird is indeed black. It generally also has an orange beak, tongue and eye-ring. Less often the beak and eye-ring are red, but orange is the classic and most common form.
Blackbird (male) singing
Blackbird (male) eating a berry
Those were taken yesterday (but were put to one side in favour of the wren. The next three shots were taken today, on the edge of a woodland path. It’s the female of the species, and she is brown… from beak to tail.
Female blackbird head on
Female blackbird side view
Female blackbird in angry mode!
Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D Mark II and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens.
I’m more pleased than usual to be blogging tonight, not just because of the subject matter. Yesterday I was modifying some of the background settings and managed to do two things. First I locked myself out of the site. Completely. No way to log in, just a dead page and an error code. Then in attempting to sort that out, I knocked the site over completely. 🙁
Thankfully everything of importance is backed up, so the panic levels were no more than moderate. I had another look this morning and was able to get the basic site back up (I’d installed an old system file which needed a minor edit to remove a deprecated command). The lesson here is that error codes are really useful things if you bother to read them! It gave me the file and line that was causing the problem. A quick edit sorted it. Tonight I updated a second corrupted file. And Eureka! I was back in business.
So much for that. I really wasn’t looking forward to re-building from scratch.
The second reason for wanting to blog today is that I caught a glimpse of our local great spotted woodpecker. It lives at the edge of the car park at work, and is just beginning to get active. I’ve previously photographed its chicks, and with luck I’ll be able to do the same over the coming weeks/months. These shots are the female, but I’m sure her mate is around.
So all told a good day. A working website and a great spotted woodpecker. I can relax again.
Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D Mark II and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens.
