Digital Art Zone

Oh look, another birdie

Look what I found hiding in my archive.

Love the flying shots, Mallard pretty good but the Common Tern is a beauty.

Did you train that House Sparrow to pose like that becasue that is another fine shot.

I have bird feeders just about everywhere I can in our small 30 foot square garden. We get so many birds in that we often see a sparrow hawk lurking.

I have a couple shots of a bee but this one is much better than mine. I couldn’t get close enough. This you you can see the pollen sticking to the body which is just great.

Szark

Thanks the Common Tern (I’ll take your word for it, I can recognise some birds but I’m far from an expert) is cropped (even with a 500mm lens) and was taken at Ranworth Broad in Norfolk. Its one of those hidden away little gems that is off the main tourist trail. They have a two storey hide/shop/snack bar at the edge of the broad, this shot was taken from one of the upstairs windows. It’s about a 20-30 minute walk from the free (well it was last time I was there) car park at the edge of Malthouse Broad.

The Sparrow was a grab shot at Maldon (on the Essex coast) from about 3m away according to the Exif data, the reeds are at the edge of a large wildlife pond with paths all around it and the birds appear to be fairly used to people passing by so you can get some pretty good close up shots even with a moderate lens (this is a cropped shot taken at 135mm).

We’re heading north this summer to York and plan a trip out to Dalby Forest drive, somewhere we’ve been before and when we were there we had all sorts of small birds (finches, sparrows and goodness knows what else) stealing crumbs from our picnic table whilst we were still eating, unfortunately I didn’t have my camera to hand, a truly cardinal sin for a keen photographer.

Frank

Thanks, the bee was the best shot out of a couple of dozen taken in the castle gardens in Bridgenorth in Shropshire, a place best know for being the north end of the Severn Valley Railway (a steam heritage line) and its funicular railway. I took this with a Sigma 150mm Macro lens that I’ve had a for a few years now and a great lens for these sort of shots, this particular shot is un-cropped & taken at 440mm according to the Exif data. This particular bush was covered in bees, a lot of the other people in the gardens seem to be avoiding it for some reason, don’t know why.

Nice pics, Kinich, and I have to say I absolutely love the Norfolk Broads, would love to live on a boat there.
It’s actually one of the few places In England I’d want to live, I absolutely love the place.

Thanks pumeco, we are lucky enough to live close enough to make day trips to the Broads feasible. A good few years ago (and a few more) I spent a holiday on the broads with some friends, though we tended to just cruise from pub to pub to pub rather than take photos, , lots of which have their own moorings so we’d arrive in the late afternoon, tie up and have a few drinks, sometimes we even ate, then crash-out on the boat until we woke up the next morning and headed onto another pub for lunch before finding somewhere to spend the night again, oh to be young again!

itty bitty baby squirrel

pumeco - 20 June 2012 12:41 PM

Nice pics, Kinich, and I have to say I absolutely love the Norfolk Broads, would love to live on a boat there.
It’s actually one of the few places In England I’d want to live, I absolutely love the place.

Ditto

Yes it is a common tern. I have been a serious bird watcher for over 20 years. I have even taken shots of nesting terns. One day I may get all my old photos digitised.

Szark - 21 June 2012 04:01 AM

pumeco - 20 June 2012 12:41 PM

Nice pics, Kinich, and I have to say I absolutely love the Norfolk Broads, would love to live on a boat there.
It’s actually one of the few places In England I’d want to live, I absolutely love the place.

Ditto

Yes it is a common tern. I have been a serious bird watcher for over 20 years. I have even taken shots of nesting terns. One day I may get all my old photos digitised.

I only watch the silly birds, the serious ones don’t sound fun to watch

I was very lucky this day , to be able to see the baby cardinal leaving the nest and taking his or hers photos.

Kinich - 20 June 2012 01:10 PM

sometimes we even ate

In other words you were all on the pull - lol

But yup, I know what you mean.  I read a lot of stuff about the Norfolk Broads and it’s clearly a paradise for bird lovers.  My dad was a bird fanatic and when they took a holiday there, they loved it.  It’s because of that holiday I suppose you could say I fell in love with the place.  It was me who had to drive them there and picked them back up when the holiday was over.  It was two long trips for me, but I didn’t mind after I’d seen the place!

They had use of a little boat so I was able to have a go on it while I was there, and that was that, I’ve been smitten ever since.  Just seems like a very different, much nicer world on a boat on the broads.  I suppose the same is true for any waterway really.  I know I’d happily live on even a very small cabin cruiser on the broads or indeed any waterway in Europe.  It’s the lifestyle that attracts me, the freedom of it.

As for the birds, I’m not as knowledgeable as you lot are, but one bird I would like to spot is the Greater Breasted Norfolk Deck Warbler which is said to be making a comeback now that the summers in Norfolk are getting hotter.  They’re quite a rarity on the broads but they’re actually quite easy to identify because they have long legs and often use the decks of the boats as a sun trap.

Not my photo, but here’s a couple of Greater Breasted Norfolk Deck Warblers:
http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/4065/PreviewComp/SuperStock_4065-5375.jpg

ROFLOL I am not saying anything on the grounds it may incriminate me. Oh the quips reeling around my mind now is hard to handle. I’M OFF BEFORE I SAY SOMETHING I SHOULDN’T

Yeah, but I bet even the most hardcore of bird fanatics fell for that one

I didn’t need the image to figure it out and it only took a second. Got to get up earlier than that to fool me dude.