{"id":2562,"date":"2013-04-02T23:04:13","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T22:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/2562"},"modified":"2013-11-02T00:18:34","modified_gmt":"2013-11-02T00:18:34","slug":"a-beautiful-firecrest-our-smallest-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/a-beautiful-firecrest-our-smallest-bird\/","title":{"rendered":"A Beautiful Firecrest (our smallest bird)"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->After an extremely barren period photographically, things changed today with the appearance of the sun. It was still bitingly cold, more like a perfect winter&#39;s day than spring, but it was worth it for this sequence of shots. <\/p>\n<p>It&#39;s a firecrest, arguably the smallest of the UK birds (the rival is the equally small goldcrest). This was a first sighting for me (ever), and to see one behaving so cooperatively was a very special bonus. The light was strong, and the dark shadows of the small conifer did create some challenges. Lots of sharp contrasts, to say nothing of the difficulty following a tiny bird that constantly flits in and out of the branches, barely keeping still for more than a moment. <br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/firecrest_0204137048.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/firecrest_0204137120.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/firecrest_0204137165.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/firecrest_0204137197.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/firecrest_0204137213.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>As a contrast, here&#39;s a shot from earlier of the day of what is arguably our <i>largest<\/i> native bird, the mute swan. This is a juvenile in the shade of some trees.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/swan_0204136992.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>It&#39;s nice to be back taking photos, and if the rest of the year is as good as this, I won&#39;t be complaining.<br \/><span class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/natureblognetwork.com\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/natureblognetwork.com\/button.php?u=Words\" width=\"0\" height=\"0\" alt=\"Nature Blog Network\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/span><br \/><a title=\"site stats\" href=\"http:\/\/statcounter.com\/free-web-stats\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/c.statcounter.com\/7187219\/0\/2c644058\/1\/\" alt=\"site stats\" style=\"border:none;\" \/><\/a><br \/><i>Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[980],"tags":[950,339],"class_list":["post-2562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds-2","tag-firecrest","tag-swan","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}