Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
This is the first time we have seen a badger standing on the ground reaching up for the food at the top of the sawn off tree trunk.
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A Kestrel hovering always into the wind with some lovely detail of the feathers. 2 images from the same 'hover' shown side by side. They keep their head position amazingly still while the wings, tail and body move all over the place.
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Some sunshine on a cold day brought out the buzzards to use the thermals. But this one was flying by - these are accurately positioned successive frames.
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In failing light a pair of rooks separated in flight - the top bird just flew by but the bottom one chose a totally inadequate twig to land on which immediately broke (see it in the claw in the middle shot) and it flew off. All over in half a second.
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A sudden strongly wind blown but short staying snowfall gets sent flying by this arriving robin.
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Later the same day with snow still about: "Stay off - this is my patch ..."
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This Badger visited different sites before and after an overnight snowfall over a 5 hour period. 5 days later he visited briefly again and knocked over various bits of our photo kit just after midnight. Maybe we should christen him 'Demolition Brock'.
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Mouse trying the 'Indian rope trick' with it's tail? They really are wonderfully agile little creatures.
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A solitary buzzard found a thermal right over our patch and up it went, but not before we caught this portrait.
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The return of the muntjac deer. The first image was it 'playing' tag with some magpies - we felt this image helps give a sense of scale normally missing for this tiny deer. The white spec at the bottom of the head immediately below the eye is his tusk - a vampire Bambi?
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Near dawn next morning he passed through a camera site and took his head-on portrait that unfortunately is so straight that the tusk is hidden.
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Bluetits often feed on the peanut grit we leave out at the photo sites, but rarely oblige with such a nice portrait.
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Looks a bit like a mountain climber with limbs and finger/toes spread for grip on this now slippery log.
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Add your own caption ...
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Pairs of corvids are everywhere. Here we see 2 pairs of jackdaws and one pair of rooks at the 'Black-Poplar Dating Agency'. Genuine single frame.
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Both sexes of Great Spotted Woodpeckers are regular visitors outside the kitchen. The red patch on the back of the head indicates the male.
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The first good spell of morning sunshine for 2 weeks created some weak thermals and 4 buzzards took advantage. A single call alerted us and we caught this image before the bird disappeared into the haze.
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3 successive frames show what we assume is just the one mouse removing 3 hazelnuts from the site over 2 minutes (the middle frame was poor).
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A pair of jackdaws so besotted with each other they squeeze onto the little tree trunk top together. This was not a one-off but the best single frame of several.
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Voles are not regulars, but showed up at this site for a few days. The first we are confident is a Field Vole.
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Correspondents have pointed out that this second image has many characteristics of a Bank Vole (difficult to tell apart even 'in the hand when biting you') which would be a first sighting here.
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Badgers have suddenly returned. On 1 night we had 6 photos of two
very similar individuals both who looked like they had been
in the wars - one with a swollen ear and this one with a graze on
the muzzle.
We don't see them often because their obvious
foraging routes are well away from our patch.
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Just about all the seed eaters are trying hard to destroy next year fruits! But Goldfinches are ALWAYS welcome almost regardless of the mischief they get up to. Prior to these images the Goldfinch had lifted the out-of-reach fruit by its stem and then clamped it at reachable length under one foot.
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We have dozens of robins each defending a territory. At the territorial boundery one bird becomes hesitant and another arrived. This one was perched on the top of a little post that holds our house name board.
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According to the CCTV this tawny owl spent several minutes on our 'raptor perch, then visited the perch outside the kitchen window for a minute, but took a poor picture only as it left. Then 20 minutes later an hour after midnight (we assume the same bird) took it's portrait at the tree stump.
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We couldn't resist this closer and enlarged crop from the above.
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One mouse is eating an (unripe?) berry we haven't identified - it was NOT put out as 'bait'.
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This montage really points out the huge difference in size between lunch and the diner. Actually the mouse was there about 2 hours before the fox, and reappeared afterwards.
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Just a few fieldfares are about now. This one was landing high up in a Black Poplar.
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The Bluetits (and Great tits) are enjoying the swelling cherry buds
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A couple of days later the bluetits were busy wrecking the buds on an Ash tree. This one was leaping from twig to twig every few seconds, and we were lucky to get even this marginal image of the bird attacking the bud on the other side of the twig in the heavy overcast light.
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We often see Rooks carrying 'something' flying North to South on a flight path to our east. This bird flying close and low over the field resolved the mystery - a seemingly endless supply of animal feed pellets from a nearby farm. They must be a godsend for these birds in the depth of winter.
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A CCTV recording of the same event shows that this Barn owl was making chance flyby behind the kitchen window feeder in the early hours. Its a bit behind the pre-focus on the perch but a rather unusual view. The wing on our left falls into the shadow of the feeder and disappears but you can see the tip at the extreme left at the top of the frame (edge of the original).
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A fox has been visiting this site every few days to pick over the stored apple windfalls & other fruit we put out. We couldn't resist this close-up - count the whiskers!
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We often find chewed fruit stones with their kernels removed, but don't remember such a graphic illustration that this mouse is more interested in the kernel in the fruit stone than in all the fruit lying around it. Perhaps it likes 'nuts' as much as we do!
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Fieldmouse taking off with a stale Christmas hazelnut. Different creatures open nuts in different ways - Google search for
hazelnut AND dormouse AND vole AND "wood mouse"
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After a bit of an absence a green woodpecker appeared for a forage in a rather photogenic leaf litter.
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