{"id":1109,"date":"2008-04-08T23:04:05","date_gmt":"2008-04-08T22:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1109"},"modified":"2013-11-22T19:30:13","modified_gmt":"2013-11-22T19:30:13","slug":"a-red-letter-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/a-red-letter-day\/","title":{"rendered":"A Red Letter Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

One of the delights of going out with the camera is coming across something unexpected. Today I made an early start, and managed to grab a few minutes before work to see the early morning birds. There's a spot that had caught my eye yesterday when I saw a goldfinch in the last of the snow.<\/p>\n

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So I went back there today. No goldfinches, but a very bold and co-operative chaffinch.<\/p>\n

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He was there again at lunchtime, and proved to be the most cooperative of subjects, allowing me time to construct shots and get close. All the shots of him are full frame which is a rarity with small birds. Usually I crop down to a greater or lesser extent.<\/p>\n

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This third shot is my favourite of the three, even though I wasn't as close.<\/p>\n

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But none of these are red letter photos. For that I have to go back to the start of the day when, while watching the chaffinch, a flash of colour caught my eye. A small bird crossed along the lower part of the trees and settled briefly. I was an uncomfortable distance away from where it landed, but for once I was cautious and took some shots before attempting to move in any closer.<\/p>\n

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As for what it is, well it's one I had to look up. I'd not seen this little fellow before, but I've scattered plenty of clues in the post. It's a redstart and this one must be an early arrival after their winter migration. It's certainly the first I've seen, but they are very quick, and could easily be mistaken for a rather elegant variant of the robin.<\/p>\n

One last note for the day. The nicked ear vixen paid a brief visit this evening. I was reasonably confident she was still around, but it was good to see her again after a few days of no sightings. She's still somewhat shy and isn't the easiest of foxes to photograph as I don't want to startle her. I'm not sure whether it was a second fox in the vicinity, but remained very alert and spent most of the time listening quite intently.
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Camera note: all birds taken with the EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens, with Kenko Teleplus 1.4x Pro 300 DG teleconverter added for the second and third chaffinch shots. The fox was photographed with the EF 24-105 F4L IS USM lens.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[980,4,16],"tags":[33,1128],"class_list":["post-1109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds-2","category-foxes","category-snow","tag-birds","tag-fox","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}