Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
We originally made, and still have, a huge vertical montage of this sequence. But you have to scroll it to view it and decent size which spoils the effect. So here is a side by side montage with enough overlap to make it make sense, together with an inset of the whole thing down the right. Positionally accurate except top pair (no reference).
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Yesterdays flight continues. The downwards stem from the tip of the beak of the left most bird above is the one in the bottom right hand corner of the previous image.
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The path of this bird allowed us to get 12 sequential images of a heron in focus against hedge and then tree backgrounds, and from them made 4 & 5 frame accurately positioned montages. The spacing of the birds was just a lucky coincidence with the frame rate of the camera (about 7 fps). Part 2 tomorrow.
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Our normal views of badgers are head first or back end, so it's nice to have badger trigger the camera when all nicely in shot. The badger is wet but the site was in the rain shadow of a conifer.
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In about 2 hours over 50 corn grains gradually reduced to zero.
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A single mallard drake at the edge of a pond. We don't know whether he had a female nearby on eggs. Traditionally the males keep away from the nest so as not to give away it's location to predators.
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The same bird decided the photographers (on their way to chuck some food into the pond) were altogether close enough, and off he went.
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No aggressive feet positions so we just can't stop ourselves seeing a faceful of joy on the bird at the left greeting his mate (single frame).
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A pair of Dunnocks spend a lot of time at this site. Here is one of the better portraits (single frame).
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A pair of kestrels mostly hunt in adjacent areas with a boundary roughly to our North and South of our patch. But they spent some time hunting together without conflict in an overlapping area around our patch giving us the chance to take this flyover of the female who usually stays to the North..
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This Sparrowhawk made an atypical loop round the house before vanishing as fast as it arrived.
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Two minutes after the sunset lit flyby (yesterdays image) the bird
had perched on this post about 20m from us, then dived down to
the base but came up with nothing and flew off to some more
distant posts.
From the right read the sequence as: Post, Up,
down, down, (lost in the grass not shown), takeoff (too confused
to include) wings up & surprisingly bright (no flash) to left and
fly off to left.
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In that few minutes between dark enough for the barn owl to emerge and there not being enough light to photograph it, this barn owl floated silently by lit by the orange sky.
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A female Great spotted woodpecker seems to have taken a liking to the tree-trunk top. Here she is using her tail as a prop in the woodpecker's characteristic way. No wonder the tail tips get so tatty and dirty.
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Just after dark this fieldmouse comes out to see what is left after the birds have settled down for the night.
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This juvenile heron spent 30 minutes at 'Duck' pond where we saw
it catch nothing (inexperienced - a mature bird found 2 Great
Crested Newts in 5 minutes). It then flew (instead of the usual
walk) to Round pond where it first took a single frog and then
this mating pair from right where we later found the spawn.
After several minutes throwing them about on the ground behind
the pond it separated the pair and swallowed one of them. We
didn't see where the other went and think it may have survived -
there was no sign of it in the water or the bank behind a few
minutes after the heron left.
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The end of this long cold winter as seen an explosion of snowdrops scattered about in places we have never seen (or at least noticed) them before. Here they are tucked against a pollarded branch left to rot for the creatures to feed on.
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Nice 'Chaffinch Aerobraking' as it flies in to the tree trunk top.
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You don't often get this good a view of what a mouse is eating. In this case potato peel.
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The Viburnum flowers are now withering, but this great tit looks like it is about to attack the fresh leaf buds.
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Rowan berries seem to be left till last, but the mice systematically clear the site of them so they can't be 'that' bad.
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Table manners Fieldmouse style (single frame horizontally compressed):-
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Three sweet little fieldmice quietly feeding (single frame).
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But that is just a corner of the larger story ... Successive frames one minute apart show all 4 fieldmice deciding on a simultaneous rapid departure. Reason unknown, but other less graphic instances were the arrival of a badger.
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We have been regularly going out at sunset to hope to see our local Barn owl setting out on his evening hunt. Twice now, at different places, we have seen the owl being harassed by a Corvid, in one case never identified, and in this case definitely a jackdaw. As the darkness forces us back home the owl gets left in peace by the corvids as well.
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Just for the joy of showing three Kestrel pics in one go.
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Our latest offering from our on-going attempt to depict a robin picking up corn grain from the surface of water. The camera was focussed ready for the bird to take the corn grain just above the birds head in the top image, so they are not as crisp as hoped. The whole sequence lasts about half a second - neither the camera nor photographer has time to adjust anything.
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The sparrowhawk passed over the house with the camera for once pointed in the right general direction so we caught this overhead view.
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Despite the cold weather we have a good show of Snowdrops this year. Here a tiny Snowdrop struggles up through the snow and mud.
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These frozen damaged cherries seem to be a favourite of the mice once they have cleaned up the peanuts. This cherry had vanished in the next frame 13 mins later.
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This is the most characteristic frame from a sequence that makes
any sense on its own. The owl was flying generally towards the
camera and obviously spotted something and followed it with its
head (an Owl's eyes can hardly move in their sockets so the whole
head has to follow).
It was not hovering - just a momentary glance on the way by.
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Within the same minute it flew onto the sunlit side of the photographer, but now rather distant, and dived down into the grass out of sight.
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A chance glimpse through a gap in the hedge and a trudge over the fields brought us our first close encounter with a barn owl which disdainfully ignored both photographer and camera noise to hunt over some rough grass. These two images were 3 frames apart (so accurate positioning would completely spoil the effect!)
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The imminence of Spring has just about everything pairing up. This is obviously a pair of robins - they can see each other and are not fighting!
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And two fieldmice getting up close and personal.
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