Goldfinches Fighting Over Food In The Snow

This was one of those rare occasions when I was in the right place at the right time with my camera and 100-400mm lens, poised and ready to snap away. I had been watching Greenfinches, lots of them, all battling it out to get to a seed feeder, but two or three Goldfinches attracted my attention and I turned my lens towards them. At first I got a couple of photographs of one of them perched on a branch in some snow, and then, unlike the Greenfinches, the goldfinches tend to be a bit more polite and seem to take it in turns to feed. However, in the frozen temperatures when the ground is too hard for the birds to find food all hell breaks loose and its bird eat bird, so to speak. Even though there was a spare perch on the other side of this small Niger seed feeder the Goldfinch on the left obviously wanted it all to himself because he seemed determined to get rid of the one on the right, of course it could have been a rival male. Anyway, I captured this image as it happened and a couple of others that were no good, heads hidden behind wings or blurred with motion as they fought, it was a relatively dull day so I couldn't get very fast shutter speeds (as you can tell from the slight blur of the wings) and was already using the largest aperture available.

Hopefully the sun will show its face more often soon and I can continue with some more bird photography.

Snow In Brighton

I'm sure those of you that live in th UK are well aware that we are having a very cold and snowy winter, and here in Brighton it's no different. These are a few shots I took looking down towards the centre of Brighton, doesn't everything look so much more beautiful like this?