Odds & Sods 2023

Thank you - it sat nicely for me

Compared to Linda's shots of fabulous Dippers and dramatic life and death struggle, mine are somewhat prosaic.

First off some Starlings. I get a small flock visiting our garden roughly this time every year. I reckon they are hunting Leatherjackets for their recently hatched young.

In about 4 or 6 weeks time, the number of birds more than treble as fledglings are brought to our garden. I think the bird at the bottom of the photo is showing off. Twisting its head round so much. Wish I could do that. Certainly help with swimming.

After a couple or three weeks of intensive feeding, the Starlings tend to disappear dramatically.

Generally, about three or four fledglings remain, as they realise there is good eating to be had from my bird feeder. It was rather a wet day.

A marauder. We only have two, this year. One year we had six! I'm reluctant to put bird boxes up as we have so many Jays, Magpies, Great Spotted Woodpeckers and Covids around.

My other nemesis. They make a mess of my pots, as they dig into them for buried acorns and expensive bulbs I planted. I think the swines have eaten all my allium bulbs.

No idea why this Squirrel is doing what looks like a yoga pose. It held it for about two minutes, looking totally unconcerned.

I think this squirrel is drinking sap. I hacked a big branch from the the top of our birch tree about a month ago. I keep them well pollarded, otherwise they get too big for our small garden. Anyway, the wound hasn't yet healed fully, and sap oozes out of it. When I prune back twigs and branches in summer, I can get a lot of sweet tasting sap dripping on me.

Here is a 'Ring of despair.' Birds, particularly pigeons, walk around the base of the bird feeder, looking for bits of food. Over the years, a large number of birds have tramped down, and then killed the grass, to form a shallow muddy ditch around the base of the bird feeder.  I think it is beginning to recover. The number of pigeons visiting our garden has drop to 2 from an all time high of 25. I made incremental improvements to my bird feeder to stop so much food falling onto the ground.

You might notice the daisies. It's no-mow May. Well, actually, it's been no-mow October to March. A brief mow in early April - I was beginning to reach for my bill hook to hack my way through to parts of my garden - followed  by a no-mow April. I gave the 'lawn' a shave on the last day of April, in preparation for no-mow May. The above photo shows how many daisies flowered after four days. Great for nectar loving insects.

The Wood pigeon enters the 'zone of despair'. Hah, nothing much falling from my MK II birdfeeder.

For some reason it decided to do this. I think it was sunning itself, rather than stretching its wings.

I wasn't too bothered about giving my 'lawn' a really close shave and depriving insects of nectar from daisies. My garden has other plants recommend for early spring nectar feeders: Pulmonaria, Forget-me-nots', Daffs, primroses and....I let our Kale go to flower. Brilliant plants, these. Been giving us greens since last summer - just pick as many leaves as you want, and leave the plant to continue growing.  Now, they are sustaining insects. You should hear the buzzing that goes on around them.

I've got three clumps in my small veg patch. When they go to seed, their replacements should be ready for harvesting of leaves. Plus, the daisies are back, plus other garden flowers are coming on stream, to keep feeding our endangered pollenating insects.

Have you checked inside the pot where the squirrel is doing the 'yoga pose' ... it looks like it  might have been having a wee ...

Grey heron on the look out for food this morning which is pretty much anything, not great news for the local ducklings sadly.

A ride out in the countryside and saw this beautiful Pheasant in the long grass, when it saw me it ducked into the grass out of sight, a few moments later it resurfaced 

If it did, then it was the only useful thing a squirrel did in our garden - fertilise a pot.

All photos, bar the kale, taken with R7.

6.25am this morning, this chap turned up again. Sniffed around back door no more than 18 feet (5.5m) from me. Simply point camera, push shutter on 80D, easy as falling off a log.

Foxy looked a little worried.

My R7 has a Sigma 150-600mm lens attached to it. I was worried the fox was so close it wouldn't focus. The beastie was right outside our back door. Six steps from where I was standing and I would have reached where it was.

My 80D has a Sigma 18-300mm lens attached to it. I felt I had better chance of getting the fox in focus, especially if the fox walked even closer. Plus the fox was close enough to get reasonable detail with my 80D.

What I have noticed is the difference in ISO and shutter speeds between the 80D and R7.

I'm a dead lazy photographer, and tend to leave my cameras in P, Program mode. The 80D would, say, set ISO at 6400, with shutter speeds of, say, 1/160 to 1/250.

By Contrast, the R7, with an ISO of 640, would use much faster shutter speeds, say 1/600 to 1/1025. Improved sensor technology, I guess. The R7 is at least two generations ahead of the 80D.

Love the wood pigeon Angus.... that's a fabulous photo! Well caught