Just the briefest sighting of a fox today, so instead I'll concentrate on some of the smaller creatures. Birds certainly fall within that category, and at lunchtime today I spent about 10 minutes watching a pair blue tits flitting among the branches of an ornamental tree. Here's the pair of them together. 
One of the interesting things about watching animals over a period of time is that you begin to notice the changes in behaviour. When I first started watching pied wagtails they were nearly always ground-hopping, but over the late autumn they were perched high on buildings swooping elegantly for flies. Now they are back at low level, and seemingly more bold than I recall. I assume they are 'following the food' as it were, and at this time of year find better pickings on the ground.
I was having an odd time with the wood mouse this evening. I grabbed one 'sensible' shot of the mouse on the feeder, and then was presented with a series of views such as this!
A little later on, during one of my periodic forays into the garden I noticed one of the newts was out and about. I grabbed the macro lens and was taking some photos when I noticed some movement a couple of feet away from me. The mouse was getting cheeky. Very cheeky…
Camera note: birds taken with the EF70-300mm 4.5-5.6 DO IS lens; the wood mouse in the tree with the EF 24-105 F4L IS USM; and the final two shots were taken with the Sigma 105mm F2.8 EX DG macro
Vulpes vulpes
6 Feb 2008Great comical shots of the mouse and the blue tits make a nice portrait.
BitzyMe
6 Feb 2008giving you his backside… that's funny.
That squirrel I caught today did the same thing to me. At first I thought it was saying,, "you can't see me" like a little kid does when they shut their eyes when they've done something naughty! hehe…
gdare
6 Feb 2008You feed that mouse pretty well, no wonder he is fat 😀
Words
6 Feb 2008Bitzy, It's so rare for them to sit in the tree for any length of time like that, and it has to be facing away from the camera… :faint: Saw your squirrel sequence. :up:
Words
6 Feb 2008Vulpes, thanks! The mouse was being a bit of a star last night (in an odd sort of way).
Words
6 Feb 2008Darko, it theft, pure and simple! He did a pretty goodcarrying it despite the size (with just a minor tendency to run round in circles!).
SittingFox
6 Feb 2008That mouse! :chef: :chef:
😆 Brilliant! That photo of it running off with the dog treat should be in a light-hearted wildlife calender somewhere!
Flying Red Fox Blog
6 Feb 2008I think everyone can see, well everyone that knows Opera anyway lol:P
Great pics i think the woodmouse is really cute:heart: He better watch out though, if a Fox caught him doing that he will be the additional meal!
cakkleberrylane
6 Feb 2008All of them are wonderful pictures. Yes, the mouse pictures should be published somewhere for everyone to see. That is really funny!
Words
6 Feb 2008I'm really going to have to set up the mouse shot properly! That one was grabbed unexpectedly. I did spend an hour with tripod and remote lined up on a biscuit the other night. But no mouse!
anonymous
7 Feb 2008The Black Rabbit writes:
You know Words, I tire of quotes (templates even, how RUDE is that?!) on flickr like "Hi! I'm an admin for perfect treescape bird portrait faves, and we'd just LURVE to have this shot in our sad, wrongly identified collection of miserable tame animal photographs" etc… etc..!
I rarely visit sites and give out praise for photographic imagery these days, because there is a veritable plethora of images I'd probably be responding to or commenting on. "Everything is permuted" is a class apart though.
Your photograph of the "Wagtail, wasp? and wall" won my (ONLY) 2007 Photo of the year award last year, and rightly so in my opinion, yet even though my little diary blog is linked to many good sights, I keep returning to "Everything is permuted" for stunning imagery.
I see, (no real surprise though) you haven't let me down, this time, either.
With modern photographic equipment, it is relatively simple to get a decent, sharp(ish!) image of a bird or animal, sometimes very close up, sometimes in almost a portrait shot. Certainly if one has the money to buy an expensive DSLR and long telephoto lens or even a digiscope set up, the need for field craft is massively lessened these days.
What many, MANY (amateur?)photographers seem to forget with all their gizmos though is the art of framing and composition.
It is the one thing, or at least the most important thing in my opinion, which separates your photographs from the sea of "just others".
Recently – your Goldfinch compositions are stunning, as is your Blue Tits photograph (that almost looks oriental), and the mouse backside rounds it all off nicely!
It is always a pleasure to visit your site Words – please keep up the wonderful first class (different league) photography, and more importantly, imagery.
Thank you.
BitzyMe
7 Feb 2008Here Here!! :yes: :cheers:
Words
8 Feb 2008Black Rabbit, thanks so much for those comments. You've got some pretty excellent work on your blog too. I'm getting better at picking shots, but a lot of it is in the editing afterwards (cropping to one side and so on), and not scaring the subject (I'm not always successful at that!). But it is odd how individual styles start to emerge. I hadn't really thought about it when I started taking pictures, I just snapped away but over time you do get to develop preferred ways of composing. With the foxes I nearly always try to get below them and shoot slightly upward. I also tend to the cute side (which was never really intended!)