Wildlife in a Suburban Garden

Bank Vole

Its not often that you get the chance to photograph a vole but today was an interesting one.  I took myy scope on to Haldon in the hope that I may have the chance to "digiscope" the Crossbills if they came to the high trees by my feeding station.  The weather was bright and sunny so it was a perfect day for that.  Recently I have been putting out much more food for the birds in the hope that I might be able to attract Bramblings to feed there.  It has deffinitely made a difference with lots and lots more birds coming to the food but they were mostly Coal Tits so far. As I stood watching the tree tops I noticed a vole come to spilt seed under the feeder and I concentrated my efforts there to try and photograph it if it came again.  It did return quite quickly and because my Lumix camera was attached to my scope I used this set up to get a few photos.  Not ideal of course,  I had to manually focus the camera and it wasnt easy. This was really interesting becaus I had seen and photographed a vole there way back on September 4th, thats about 22 weeks ago!  Of course it's not possible to know if it is the same animal but its bound to be related if not the same individual.  I would really like to investigate how many voles there are here. Both times I have seen them was within  inches of the same spot so they must have a nest right there or very nearby.

Hawfinches - All Saints Churchyard, East Budleigh Devon.

It's worth noting that all of the images on this site are slightly degraded,  to see images that are as I took them then please link to my Smugmug galleries here hawfinch gallery and other birds.

 

 In the churchyard at East Budleigh - East Devon which happens to be the birthplace of Sir Walter Raleigh.  The church dates back to Saxon times - the existing building was constructed in the 13 century - and the church bells are the same ones that Sir Walter Raleigh would have heard 500 years ago!  Raleighs parents are interred in the churchyard here. 

There had been reports of Hawfinch feeding on yew tree berries, (probably). The Hawfinch, under normal circumstances, is a very, very difficult bird to find let alone photograph but this winter there are more Hawfinches in the UK than in living memory. Never the less they are still hard to locate. We were pleased to actually get some photographs this morning, albeit not my best ever bird photographs but worth posting because of their "celebrity" status. It will probably be years before I get the chance to photograph them again. As you can see they have massive beaks which can even crack open cherry stones by the way.

Common Crossbill, Haldon Forest

Yesterday afternoon I had a nice encounter with a small group of Common Crossbill. There were 5, one adult male and one female and what looked like 3 juveniles.  This looked to be a small family group and would mean that the pair may have bred very late in the year.....or very early in the season depending on how you want to look at it.   Of course, I can't be sure but it could be the case, they do breed when feeding conditions are right and for them, that is when there is an abundance of pine seeds to feed on.  They were at the top of a very high pine tree and seemed to be taking water from the wet foliage.   I have suspected that they do drink in this way but I have never read about this and a quick internet search drew a blank as well. 

This image seems to show the bird taking something from the needles as described.  The image below shows the small group.

 

Thank you for visiting my blog and welcome.

 

Charlie Fleming

Lumix G9

I know it's only a little Robin again but I just needed to get out - between the showers this afternoon- with the new camera. If you know anything about cameras you will be as amazed as me that the shutter speed for this photo was only 1/30 of a second, how can that be and it still be sharp? This image is straight from the camera, not manipulated or cropped in Photoshop. With most long lenses you need to be around 12 feet or more to be able to focus but with this setup, a Vario 100-400 lens you can focus down to 3 feet, amazing! I am really staggered by my new Lumix G9, a mirrorless camera instead of the usual DSLR. This is a watershed moment in wildlife photography I think. Just imagine when we have some good light.  Here is the EXIF which you may find interesting if it's not for you then please just ignore it.  "Please note: Due to some compression on this Blog there is some slight degrading of the original image".

Aperture Value: 5.311
Color Space: Uncalibrated
Contrast: Normal
Custom Rendered: Normal process
Date Time Digitized: Jan 15, 2018 at 15:36:27
Date Time Original: Jan 15, 2018 at 15:36:27
Exif Version: 2.3.1
Exposure Bias Value: -0.33
Exposure Mode: Auto exposure
Exposure Program: Normal program
Exposure Time: 1/30
File Source: DSC
Flash: Off, did not fire
FNumber: 6.3
Focal Length: 400
Focal Length In 35mm Film: 831
Focal Plane Resolution Unit: centimeters
Focal Plane X Resolution: 8,452.633
Focal Plane Y Resolution: 8,452.633
Gain Control: High gain up
Photographic Sensitivity (ISO): 400
Lens Model: LEICA DG 100-400/F4.0-6.3
Lens Serial Number: 27JIF30G044P
Max Aperture Value: 5.312
Metering Mode: CenterWeightedAverage
Pixel X Dimension: 5,184
Pixel Y Dimension: 3,456
Saturation: Normal
Scene Capture Type: Standard
Scene Type: A directly photographed image
Sensing Method: One-chip color area sensor
Sharpness: Normal
Shutter Speed Value: 1/30
Sub-second Time: 580
Sub-second Time Digitized: 580
Sub-second Time Original: 580
White Balance: Auto white balance
Lens Model: LEICA DG 100-400/F4.0-6.3

Bird images taken with the Lumix G9 to Vario -Elmar 100-400 Lens.

These images were taken with the new Panasonic Lumix G9.  I have used it today for the very first time....it's simply amazing. I was expecting it to produce good images but I wasn't expecting it to be so light and portable when compared to my previous heavy Sigma 500 prime.  Whats more, because of the very powerful and effective image stabilisation I was able to take pictures handheld with a shutter speed of only 1/30 of a second.  This is an amazing breakthrough for me and will be for every photographer that I know. It means that you can also take pictures with low ISO and therefore there will be less annoying noise on the pictures, something I hate and always spoils loads of my pictures..  So today when the light was too dull to get out and take pictures normally, with the new G9 I still able to get out and I had incredible success.  The sharpness and detail of every image taken today noticeably exceeded the quality of photos taken with my previous Pentax. This is good news when you have invested so much money.  One of the problems with camera equipment is trusting online reviews and advice from people with a vested interest but I had seen some brilliant images taken by people I trust. Never the less, it would have been really good to be able to test it out for myself in the field.

 

 

One of the big features of the camera is the really fast focusing speed, supposedly the fastest of any camera on the market and therefore, presumably the fastest of any camera in the history of photography.  This was really useful today because it meant I hardly missed a shot.  There is so much more to this camera and I will write about it more when I have used the various features.

This is a Dunnock by the way.

Red backed Woodpecker, Sri Lanka

I have been sorting through my pictures from my December trip to Sri Lanka. One of the highlights was the close views that I had of Red backed Woodpecker. This bird is interesting because it was recently declared a species in it's own right. Formerly it had been thought to be a sub-species of the Flame-backed Woodpecker. It is a bird only found in Sri-Lanka - therefore, and is an endemic species. These birds seem very fond of coconuts and two were in the garden regularly during my stay recently and I had great photo opportunities. I have discovered that it is possible to sperate the sexes and I dont think this has been illustrated by many people before, if at all. If you look at the photos you can see that just above the beak on the forehead, one bird has white spots on a black background and the other bird has red spots on the same black background. The white spotted bird is the female.

Bullfinch - Pyrrhula pyrrhula

We have been for a couple of long walks this weekend. One from Powderham to Cockwood on Saturday took us through Starcross. I would love to live there by the way. As we walked, we were lucky enough to see Bullfinch on two occasions, both times they were feeding on roadside berries. You can always tell a Bulfinch - probably more common than you realise - by the flash of white rump which is always really obvious in both the male and the female and also in juveniles, but by now they will have acquired their adult plumage. It's a sweeping statement but the Bullfinch has got to be one of our prettiest small birds. I have a real soft spot for them. When I was a young pre-school child my dad would take me for walks to find their nests in rural Derbyshire and it's one of the first birds I was aware of. He used to breed canaries and it was usual to also pair your canaries with British Finches way back in the 1950's and I recollect that he would put the odd egg under his sitting canaries. It was different days then and still legal to collect birds eggs until 1954. Thank heavens it's illegal now.

The Redwings are still in the garden and what a treat.

The Redwings are still visiting constantly throughout the day, particularly in the morning which is as you would expect. Birds are quite hungry in the mornings after long hours of darkness and in a hurry to feed at first light.  I have done a quick internet search to try and find the nutritional value of holly and discovered that holly berries are poisonous to humans which was a surprise.  They also contain a large percentage of caffeine, perhaps this is why birds seem so obsessed with them?  At the moment though, the apple pieces seem to be more attractive than the berries.  There has been some problems with a near neighbors horrible hairy grey cat, I have watched it stalking the birds on a couple of occasions and I am a little worried that it may eventually be successful.  So far so good and whenever I see it in my garden I chase it away, it is intelligent enough to know that - to say the least - we are not friends!  Nothing against cats, more about irresponsible cat owners.  Several million British Birds predated by domestic cats every year, one of the reasons we don't have as many birds in gardens as we used to. 

It's not every year that we get Redwings in the garden so I have been making the best of the opportunity.  I am very fond of them, very dapper and handsome birds.  I have been trying to separate individuals and to be honest I haven't been finding it all that easy and I am only guessing at the age of those I have photographed.  Is this a 2017 bred bird for example. The light edges to wing feathers would seem to suggest this. 

Redwing

I have had Redwings feeding in my garden for the last few weeks. Who would have though that one holly tree could supply so much food? The Redwing is our smallest thrush species, it looks a little bit like a Song Thrush but when you get a good enough view you can see the red flanks and the creamy white eye stripe and then you know immediately what you are looking at. They arive in the autumn from the continent and spend the next 5 or 6 months with us. When the going gets tough they move in to the suburbs to feed on the berries of ornimental garden shrubs and this is when you will get your best opportunity to see them close up. They seem to prefer Rowan, Holly and Cotoneaster....probably in that order, in fact in my experience they ignore the cotoneaster until everything else has gone. As you can see, they also take apple, usually windfalls. I put this apple half on my lawn just to see if they would come to it and the obvious answer is yes! I was really pleased to see this one on my lawn today after I had been away up norgh for the last week.