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?

Song Thrush

I was looking through and reviewing some of my recent attempts at bird photography and came across this image of a Song Thrush, a bird that is not a very frequent visitor to my garden. However, on this occasion I followed his progress around the flower beds as he searched for snails, which when found would be smashed open against the brickwork and devoured, it was fascinating to watch. Anyway, this image reminded me of another couple of shots I got of the Song Thrush during the snow we had in February. I had a look through them, since I hadn't got round to viewing them properly before, and found that I had a got a few decent images.

Snowy Days Wildlife Photography

If you live in the UK you will know that recently we have had our fair share of snow and whilst this has caused some problems it's been great for bird and wildlife photography. I often see Robin's around and this one came pretty close as I had scattered seed on the wall to try and attract them, and with the ground being covered in snow and frozen he took the bait. I recently read that most of our small birds can only last a matter of days when it's been snowing because they can't get at the worms and insects they need to survive, so I made an extra effort to put bird feed out, and on the first day of the snow fall I captured hundreds of images of around a dozen species.

Below is one of the many Grey Squirrels that inhabit these parts, I was able to capture him searching around his log for food before he lept on to he fence and disappeared.